Lewis Hamilton told to stay away from Ferrari F1 assistance tool used by team-mate

Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton told to stay away from Ferrari F1 assistance tool used by team-mate

Hamilton made a big announcement in Canada

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Wednesday 27 May 2026 21:15

Lewis Hamilton has been urged not to use the Ferrari simulator by an F1 pundit after his performance at the Canadian Grand Prix.

F1 simulators have been marked as a useful tool in a modern drivers' kit, with the younger generation of drivers such as Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, Ollie Bearman and more, all growing up with its assistance.

For older drivers such as Lewis Hamilton, however, the simulator isn't as preferable, with his distaste for the simulator floated as a reason for his potential downturn in performance last year.

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At the Canadian Grand Prix last weekend, Hamilton revealed his old-school approach with the simulator and was asked why he has moved away from using it. Far from ignoring it last year, Hamilton also confirmed how much he was actually using the technology, to what he believes was a detriment.

He told the media: "With simulations, I feel that the goalposts are always moving.

“Last year I used it every week and more often than not, I felt that you do all the work on the sim and you find a set-up that you’re comfortable with, you get to the track and everything’s opposite so you’re undoing the things you’ve learned.

"Some of the ways you approach the corners, you have to shift and adjust. The set-up that you felt was good on the simulator is not the same as the track sometimes. Sometimes it is, so it’s kind of hit and miss.

“I just decided for this one, I was going to sit it out and focus more on the data. There was just a lot of deep diving on through-corner balance, mechanical balance, corner approaches, brake balance, optimising the brakes – which has been a problem for me for some time. That’s led to really good integration with my engineers.”

“The sim is amazing, it’s an amazing space to work in,” he said. “It’s the best sim I’ve ever seen and the best group of people – there’s a large team of people I get to work with there, so a day at the sim is actually pretty incredible.

“It is a very powerful tool and something that as a team, we continue to evolve. I think since I’ve been there, I’ve had a lot of input in some of its evolution and they’ve been really responsive and made loads of changes.

“It’s not a tool that I’m 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. What I’ve done for the last six months is you’d go in after the weekend and you’d work on correlation, but then you go to the next track and it’s slightly off sometimes, so we’ll see how the weekend goes. China, for example, I didn’t do the sim and that was my best weekend.”

Schiff supports Hamilton

Speaking on the Up to Speed podcast, pundit and former racing driver Naomi Schiff explained Hamilton's reasoning and urged, that if it's leading to better performances, he should not be as reliant on the simulator.

She explained: "The thing is, you know, personally, I've never been a driver that loves a simulator, either, and I guess that that also comes down to equipment and software, and obviously the Formula One technology is far above the technology that I've used.

"However, sometimes you can develop negative habits in the simulator that you then expect to translate on track, and actually you have a completely different feeling in the car than what you have on the simulator.

"So, sometimes that work can be, you know, not necessarily advantageous. And in this case, this is what Lewis has been saying, and I know that he comes from a different generation of drivers, where actually sim racing wasn't a priority, whereas Max has grown up on a simulator, and he loves it, and he manages to extract the best out of himself for it, but it doesn't work for everyone, and correlation is a major element on this as well.

"So, maybe the sim at Red Bull has better correlation, maybe there is an element of that, but then Charles isn't saying that he's not going to use a simulator, so it can also be personal in terms of driving style, the feeling you have in the simulator versus what you have on the track, and you could see that even this weekend the two drivers were experiencing two completely different things in the same car.

"The experience is never going to be 100 per cent identical from one driver to the next, and if this is what works for him, then stay off the simulator, because clearly he was a happy Lewis Hamilton, and that's what we want to see, right? Like Lewis had a beaming smile on his face all weekend long, and we have been waiting far too long for that."

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Written by

Sheona Mountford - F1 Journalist

Sheona Mountford is a motorsport journalist specialising in F1. As a writer and contributor, she covers a wide range of motorsport series from F1 to F1 Academy, responsible for breaking news, live race coverage and in depth analysis of the sport and the culture around it.

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F1 Lewis Hamilton Ferrari Charles Leclerc Canadian Grand Prix Naomi Schiff