Lewis Hamilton has maintained his approach of not using Ferrari’s Formula 1 simulator – and he believes it’s for the best.
Ahead of May’s Canadian Grand Prix, Hamilton decided to stop using the simulator at Maranello because he felt the correlation was not good enough and he could not prepare properly with the tool.
Since then, the seven-time world champion has led everyone on the grid, including the Silver Arrows, with 96 points to Kimi Antonelli’s 79, George Russell’s 74 and Charles Leclerc’s 49, although failure at Mercedes contributed to that and his Ferrari teammate had his own struggles.
Asked by Motorsport if he had used the simulator since his Canadian days, Hamilton simply replied: “No.” Speaking about how much it has helped him in recent races, he smiled: “Huge.
“I tried to use it all last year, but as I said, when I was at Mercedes for the first few years, I didn’t use it. As it continued to develop, there was a point where we didn’t use it.
“I’ve been doing driving simulators since 1997 and they can be really powerful and really useful tools, but they can also mislead you. I found that that was the case for the whole of last year, and then the previous years when I was at Mercedes it was very similar, so I didn’t use them. Since I stopped, my results have gotten much, much better.”
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo: Simon Galloway/LAT Images via Getty Images
However, Hamilton expects Ferrari to find it more difficult to challenge Mercedes at Spa-Francorchamps after Leclerc last won the British Grand Prix.
“It’s very difficult on this track,” says the Briton. “This track has lots and lots of straights. We went to Silverstone and thought it would be a lot further, power and corner speed, so it worked out a lot better than we expected.
“So we come here again not knowing what to expect, except on a track that has about 50 per cent more straights. I think in the last race there was still a gap of maybe three or four tenths, so we’re probably expecting it to be a little bit bigger here. But we’re doing the best we can.
“In terms of just the updates, I’m so proud of the team, they continue to work on optimizing the car. We’re just tweaking it every week and it’s nice to see that instead of one update coming out every few months, there’s another one coming out every weekend, just improving a little bit every time we find something.”
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