Hamilton Explains Why He Continues to Shun Ferrari's Simulator

When asked by motorsport.com if he had used the simulator since Canada, Hamilton simply replied, “No.” Quizzed on how much this decision had helped him in recent races, he smiled and said, “Immensely.” “I tried it throughout last year, but as I said, when I was at Mercedes in the first few years, I didn't use it. As it developed, there came a point where we stopped using it,” he added. “I've been driving simulators since 1997, and they can be incredibly powerful and useful tools, but they can also mislead you. I found that was the case all of last year, and in previous years at Mercedes, it was very similar, which is why I didn't use it. Since I stopped, my performance has improved significantly.”

“This track is very challenging,” the Briton commented. “It has many, many straights. We went to Silverstone expecting to be much further behind in terms of power, but we were quick in the corners, so it was much better than we anticipated.

“So we come here without really knowing what to expect, other than the track has about 50% more straights. I think in the last race there was still a gap of maybe three or four tenths, so here we probably expect it to be a bit larger. But we're doing our best.

“In terms of improvements, I'm so proud of the team; they just keep pushing to optimize the car. Every week we make fine-tuning adjustments, which is great to see, instead of one improvement coming months later, another comes every weekend, just improving small things as we discover them,” Hamilton concluded.