Autobayng News Team
Lewis Hamilton says his performance in qualifying for the sprint race in Montreal vindicated his decision not to use the simulator before the weekend began.
He was quickest in the first round of qualifying and second in the second phase, but slipped to fifth on the grid in the shoot-out for pole position. Nonetheless Hamilton was pleased with his performance, which he feels was partly down to not preparing for the race on Ferrari’s simulator.
“That was probably the best qualifying session we’ve had for some time,” said Hamilton. “Just really great work with the engineers, the set-up changes, the car felt really fantastic from [practice] and we made just subtle changes going into quali.
“[SQ1 and SQ2 were] looking good and then I don’t know why the others are able to turn up a little bit more. But I’m just happy to be there in a fight. I was having so much fun out there.
“Also the fact that I didn’t do the sim, and I feel it’s the best I’ve felt all year, so I think that’s the way forward for me.”
Hamilton explained on Thursday he did not use a simulator regularly before joining Ferrari.
“The sim is amazing,” he said. “It’s an amazing space to work in. It’s the best sim I’ve ever seen and best group of people that I’ve known, a large team of people that 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.
“Since I’ve been there, I’ve had a lot of input in some of this evolution and they’ve been really [responsive] and made loads and loads of changes and we’ve just been improving it.
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“[But] with simulation, I feel that the goalposts are always moving. I started driving the simulator in 1997, the first simulator, I would say, at McLaren. The cockpit didn’t move but we had force feedback in the steering, and I remember it was at Woking, at McLaren’s old factory.
“Then when it moved to the first ‘real’ gen, they let me sometimes use it when I was in GP2 [in 2006]. Then at McLaren, we used it relatively often. I didn’t particularly enjoy it, because they were 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.
“Then 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, barely used the simulator, very rarely. Then in 2020, maybe 2021, I started to use it a little bit more.
“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. So, then all the other times it’s not quite perfect. But as I said, it is a powerful tool.”
Although he used Ferrari’s simulator more often last year, he believes he can often perform better without it.
“Since last year I used it every week, and more often than not I felt you do all the work on the sim, 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.
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“Some of the ways you’ve approached the corners you have to shift and adjust. A set-up that you felt was good on the simulator is not the same at the track. Sometimes it is, and so it’s kind of hit and miss.
“So I just decided for this one, I’m just going to sit it out and focus more on the data. [We did] 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.”
“I’m not saying I’m never going to use it again,” he added. “I think it’s something that, for sure, we’ll continue to utilise, particularly on power deployment.
“But often what I’ve done for the last six months, 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. But in China, for example, I didn’t do the sim for China and it was my best weekend.”
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