Lewis Hamilton isn’t buying what Ferrari’s simulator is selling him — and after Montreal, he sounds increasingly convinced it’s doing more harm than good.
Fresh from his strongest weekend yet in red, Hamilton has effectively ruled out using Maranello’s sim as a race-prep weapon again any time soon, despite admitting there’s still value in it as a development tool. The irony is hard to miss: his best performances of the season have arrived when he’s ignored one of modern F1’s most sacred preparation rituals.
Hamilton finished second in Canada, beaten only by Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes, and did it with a level of authority Ferrari has been waiting to see since the winter. He was on top of Charles Leclerc all weekend in Montreal, looked comfortable in the SF-26, and carried himself like a driver who’d finally got a clean read on what the car wants.
That uptick didn’t come out of nowhere. After Miami, Hamilton openly questioned whether the simulator was helping at all, saying the car “feels different” on track compared to what he’s being fed virtually. It was an unusually blunt assessment — not because drivers don’t grumble about correlation, but because top teams tend to treat sim work as non-negotiable. Hamilton, though, has never been particularly interested in doing something just because it’s the done thing.
He skipped the simulator before China as well and ended up on the podium — his first for Ferrari. Two of his better results, both preceded by going “old school”. In his view, that’s not coincidence.
Now, heading into Monaco, Hamilton’s message is that the sim can wait.
“I’m sure I will drive it at some point,” he said, but framed any return in terms of correlation work rather than preparation. Hamilton’s angle is that Ferrari’s simulator needs input from the only two people who can truly judge it — the race drivers — because everyone else is working in a closed loop.
“I think what could be good is, for example, going back and doing correlation to this weekend so we can find out where it’s missing,” he explained. “Because the test driver will be on there saying it’s all… they will only know what they know because they don’t get to drive — it’s only Charles and I that get to drive the car.
“So the positive of something like being able to drive the real car, go back and say, ‘This is actually what it feels like, these are the things that we’re missing,’ so that we can improve it.”
That’s a very Hamilton way of threading the needle: he’s not declaring the simulator useless, he’s challenging Ferrari to make it trustworthy. And that distinction matters. Teams don’t just use simulators for set-up directions; they use them to sharpen processes, refine driver references, and accelerate decision-making. If a driver is coming out of the sim with expectations that the real car doesn’t meet, you lose confidence — and once that goes, “preparation” becomes a liability.
Hamilton didn’t mince words when asked if he’d use it again to get ready for a race.
“Now whether or not I use it to prepare for another race? Probably not,” he said. “There are just too many risks.
“If you look at the two best races I’ve had, I didn’t use a simulator and that’s honestly how it was. Pretty much all the championships before, except for probably 2008, I didn’t use the sim, so it’s not a necessity. It’s a tool that can be powerful, but, for me, I’m old school. I’m probably better without it.”
There’s a bigger subtext here than one driver’s preference. Hamilton is 41 now, in a new environment, learning a new car, and trying to do it without drowning in modern F1’s information overload. A simulator session isn’t “just” laps; it’s a barrage of references, procedures, and engineering assumptions. If even one of those is off — if the brake feel isn’t right, if the car’s rotation doesn’t match, if the ride behaviour is wrong — then the driver arrives at the circuit with the wrong mental model.
For a driver still calibrating himself to Ferrari’s language and the SF-26’s personality, that’s a genuine risk. Hamilton’s effectively saying he’d rather build his confidence the hard way — through real track running and real feedback — than chase an artificial certainty that isn’t lining up.
Ferrari, meanwhile, heads to Monaco with expectations that the street circuit could play to the SF-26’s strengths. Straight-line speed has been a weakness so far this season, and Monaco is the one place where that flaw can be disguised if your car rides kerbs well, rotates in slow corners, and generates load at low speed. It’s also the sort of weekend where preparation matters — but not necessarily the kind you can simulate perfectly.
And there’s history hanging over this team. Ferrari still hasn’t won a race since Carlos Sainz — now at Williams — took victory in the 2024 Mexican Grand Prix. Hamilton’s most recent win came earlier that same year in Belgium, while Leclerc’s last win was the United States three months later. This is a team that’s been close often enough to feel the frustration, but hasn’t turned proximity into silverware.
Hamilton’s Monaco record is strong — wins in 2008, 2016 and 2019 — and Leclerc finally broke his home-race curse with victory in 2024. But whatever happens this weekend, the more revealing storyline may be what Ferrari does next with Hamilton’s critique.
Because when a seven-time world champion tells you your simulator is leading him the wrong way, you don’t file it as a preference. You treat it as a warning light.
