Racing
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Lewis Hamilton said at Spa-Francorchamps that he still has not used Ferrari’s simulator since dropping it before the Canadian Grand Prix, and he believes that decision has “massively” improved his performances.
Asked whether he had used the simulator at all since Canada, the Ferrari driver replied: “No.” When he was then asked how much that had contributed to a run in which he has out-scored every rival, Hamilton smiled and answered: “Massively.”
The change came ahead of Canada, when Hamilton stopped using Ferrari’s Maranello simulator because he did not feel its correlation was good enough to prepare properly. That weekend he finished second, a result that began a run of podium finishes that included an emotional win in Spain.
The results have given weight to his argument. Since stepping away from the simulator, Hamilton has reportedly scored 96 points, more than Kimi Antonelli on 79, George Russell on 74 and Charles Leclerc on 49, though that comparison has also been shaped by misfortune at Mercedes and Leclerc’s own setbacks.
Hamilton said the issue was not with simulators in principle, but with what happens when the virtual car stops matching the real one. “I tried all last year with it,” he said. “I’ve been driving simulators since 1997 and they can be really powerful and really useful tools, but they can also mislead you.” He said the same problem had appeared “all last year particularly” and in earlier years at Mercedes, adding: “Since I stopped, my performance has gone much, much better.”
The wider paddock response at Spa pointed less to a rejection of simulator work than to the old Formula 1 problem of correlation. Max Verstappen said that if a simulator is being used for setup and “it’s not correlating, of course it’s not ideal,” but he added that it remains “very useful for the team” as teams keep updating their cars and testing future ideas.
Alex Albon took a similar view. The Williams driver said it “really depends on the correlation of the car to the simulator,” and that if there are “doubts or question marks” over the tyre model or car physics, it becomes “very hard” to commit to setup changes on track.
Esteban Ocon, speaking for Haas, said the team has “very good correlation between the engine on the real track and the engine on the simulator,” but is “struggling a bit more on the rest.” He said Haas still spends a lot of time in the simulator each week, but judged it “maybe less” useful on the chassis side than in previous seasons.
That left Hamilton’s argument looking less like a dismissal of a standard F1 tool and more like a blunt verdict on one that was sending him in the wrong direction, with his recent run of results giving that technical complaint real competitive significance.