Lewis Hamilton said he will stop using Ferrari’s simulator ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, after concluding the virtual work “sent him in the wrong direction” and did not correlate with the real SF-26. Hamilton said he “does not like simulators,” that he will “back away” from simulator use and will test alternative preparation methods before Montreal. He added he will continue to attend factory meetings with Ferrari and pointed to his best weekend of the season in China, when he did not use the simulator, as justification for pausing simulator work. Hamilton said he will judge the change by his on-track performance in Canada.

The decision followed a frustrating Miami weekend in which Ferrari brought 11 upgrades to the SF-26 that the team described as a “new car” after extensive simulator work at Maranello, but the package still left the team behind McLaren and short of Mercedes on track. Hamilton qualified sixth and was classified sixth after a post-race penalty for teammate Charles Leclerc; he was seventh on the road after heavy first-lap contact with Alpine’s Franco Colapinto that damaged his car, and he finished the Sprint more than 15 seconds behind Leclerc. Hamilton said poor simulator-to-track correlation left him with a set-up that did not work, a problem he said was amplified on a sprint weekend with limited practice, and he urged Ferrari to reduce aerodynamic drag, estimating a loss of roughly three to four tenths in straight-line speed.

Mercedes and Hamilton’s engineers will re-evaluate how they use virtual tools, analyze both simulator and live-track data, and identify a more reliable route for setup and race preparation. The public withdrawal from Ferrari’s simulator underlines broader questions about how teams balance simulator development with real-world validation during a tightly contested F1 season.