Hamilton Skips Ferrari Simulator for Canada, Betting on Data Over Digital Laps

Lewis Hamilton has confirmed he did not use Ferrari's simulator in preparation for the Canadian Grand Prix, despite acknowledging it as one of the finest pieces of technology in the paddock. The seven-time world champion, who flagged correlation issues between Ferrari's sim and the actual car during the Miami weekend, made a deliberate choice to swap virtual laps for deep data analysis ahead of the Montreal race.

Hamilton was careful to draw a clear distinction: his decision to skip the simulator for Canada is not a rejection of the technology, but a strategic call for this specific weekend. He has, in fact, been actively involved in improving it since joining the Scuderia. "I think since I've been there, I've had a lot of input in some of this evolution and they've been really respondent and made loads and loads of changes, and we've just been improving it," he added.

A Relationship With Simulators That Has Never Been Straightforward

"I started driving the simulator in 1997, the first simulator, I would say, at McLaren," he recalled. "The cockpit didn't move but we had force feedback in the steering. And then when it moved to the first real gen, they let me sometimes use it when I was in GP2. And then McLaren, we used it relatively often."

Even as the technology improved, Hamilton's enthusiasm for it never fully matched the hours he was asked to put in. "I didn't particularly enjoy it, because they were kind of long days and a lot of laps. There's a point at which you stop learning when you're doing so many laps, for me personally."

His experience at Mercedes was similarly mixed. He revealed that during the team's dominant championship-winning era, simulator work was rarely a key part of his preparation. "When I joined Mercedes, they were quite far off with the sim at the time. I didn't use it in all the championships that we won — I barely used the simulator, very rarely. And then in 2020, maybe 2021, I started to use it a little bit more."

One Perfect Weekend in Two Decades

In perhaps the most striking admission of his media session, Hamilton revealed that across two decades of simulator use, there has been only one occasion where the set-up found in the virtual environment translated perfectly to the real car.

"I think there's only ever been really one time through all the years that I've used the sim in these 20 years that the set-up that I had on the sim was the exact set-up I used in qualifying and qualified pole, and that was Singapore 2012, maybe, I think, something like that," he said.

Everything else, by his own account, has been an exercise in adjustment and compromise — a pattern that has only sharpened his frustration over the past year. "Since the last year I used it every week and more often than not I felt you do all the work on the sim, and you get to the track, you find a set-up that you're comfortable with, you get to the track and everything is opposite. So, then you're undoing the things you've learned."

The inconsistency, he described as "kind of hit and miss" — a damning verdict on a tool that teams invest enormous resources into.

Montreal as the Testing Ground for a New Approach

With the Canadian Grand Prix weekend serving as a circuit where Hamilton has historically excelled, the 41-year-old has chosen it as the ideal moment to test whether he can unlock competitive performance through pure data work rather than simulator preparation.

"I just decided for this one, I'm just going to sit it out and focus more on the data," he explained. "So, there was just a lot of deep diving on through-corner balance, mechanical balance, corner approaches, brake balance, optimising the brakes, which have been a problem for me for some time. That's led to really good integration with my engineers."

Crucially, Hamilton also pointed to China as evidence in favour of his theory. "China, for example, I didn't do the sim for China and it was my best weekend," he noted — a data point that clearly weighed heavily in his decision-making for Montreal.

The Briton stopped short of writing off simulator work entirely for the future, highlighting power deployment as an area where the tool retains genuine value. But the direction of travel is clear: Hamilton, who has also been pushing for greater driver input at a structural level within Formula 1 — as Fred Vasseur and James Vowles acknowledged earlier this month — is increasingly trusting his own instincts over the numbers generated in a virtual environment.

"It's not a tool that… I'm not saying I'm never going to use again. I think it's something that, for sure, we'll continue to utilise, particularly on power deployment. But we'll see how the weekend goes," he concluded.

For a driver in his debut season with Ferrari and still searching for that defining performance in red, the results in Montreal could prove telling.