2026 Scuderia Ferrari HP F1 Team

[sucof]

Its obvious all the simulators are wrong, but the question is by how much.
Though it made me think for a while - as a programmer - how is that todays simulators are that bad as some drivers say. After all, teams are developing them since decades now, and have drivers always saying how it was wrong after a race - I assume - like Lewis just said.
They must be awesome if they did only a decent job. So why not if still not, and by how much? Or is this just an other drivers hyperbole, and they are very good already? Or it is just Ferrari that has a bad one?

[venkyhere]

Its obvious all the simulators are wrong, but the question is by how much.
Though it made me think for a while - as a programmer - how is that todays simulators are that bad as some drivers say. After all, teams are developing them since decades now, and have drivers always saying how it was wrong after a race - I assume - like Lewis just said.
They must be awesome if they did only a decent job. So why not if still not, and by how much? Or is this just an other drivers hyperbole, and they are very good already? Or it is just Ferrari that has a bad one?

Driver 'feeling the grip' = variables are temperature (tarmac, carcass, tread), tyre pressure, tarmac grain v/s rubber compound grain, relative differences left v right based on roll stiffness, uphil/downhill camber/opposite-camber in the corner, steering/slip angle, diff setting when power applied, all of this while downforce distribution is dynamically varying due to pitch/yaw/roll, resulting in the force pressing each tyre down varying every millisecond.
Now, how many variables and how accurately can they be modelled into the simulator as part of the giant 'model car' that they are driving on a particular track, is the Q.

[FDD]

I think it's a lot of convenient coincidences. Hamilton doesn't like the simulator. Ferrari probably suggested more simulator work since he didn't feel on top of things. He happened to ditch the simulator ahead of tracks where he is always good (China, Canada).

Would need a larger sample size. Imo, the simulator (or not) is not decisive for his performances. Hamilton never said there was anything wrong with Ferrari's simulator. He said it was a very good one. He's just not a simulator guy and the way things line up, he got a get out of jail free card to never touch the simulator again. Remember that Hamilton wasn't using the simulator that much last year and that hardly guaranteed a good weekend.

He literally said the car on track doesn't behave like it does on the simulator, though. This "driving feel" is different from numerical correlation. I'm not a race car driver but I can understand this.

Reminds me of a time when I temporarily moved from hand drawn art to using a stylus and digital pad... The friction on the stylus just didn't feel controllable.

You gave perfect example.
Actually the driver has to make correlation physical car/simulator to get the real "picture".
I can understand like that and Lewis does not have that link maybe, so why to lose time on the sim.

[FDD]

Its obvious all the simulators are wrong, but the question is by how much.
Though it made me think for a while - as a programmer - how is that todays simulators are that bad as some drivers say. After all, teams are developing them since decades now, and have drivers always saying how it was wrong after a race - I assume - like Lewis just said.
They must be awesome if they did only a decent job. So why not if still not, and by how much? Or is this just an other drivers hyperbole, and they are very good already? Or it is just Ferrari that has a bad one?

Driver 'feeling the grip' = variables are temperature (tarmac, carcass, tread), tyre pressure, tarmac grain v/s rubber compound grain, relative differences left v right based on roll stiffness, uphil/downhill camber/opposite-camber in the corner, steering/slip angle, diff setting when power applied, all of this while downforce distribution is dynamically varying due to pitch/yaw/roll, resulting in the force pressing each tyre down varying every millisecond.
Now, how many variables and how accurately can they be modelled into the simulator as part of the giant 'model car' that they are driving on a particular track, is the Q.

George E. P. Box: "All models are wrong, but some are useful"
"Every statistical, scientific, or mathematical model is a simplified approximation of a complex reality. No model is perfectly accurate, but they remain valuable tools for understanding the world."
As You said.

[WardenOfTheNorth]

...
"There are just too many risks. If you look at the two best races I've had, I didn't use a simulator. 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."
...

I read/heard somewhere that he rarely used it at Mercedes until 2022. So there really could be something in the theory.

Will be very interesting to see what happens.

[Luscion]

...
"There are just too many risks. If you look at the two best races I've had, I didn't use a simulator. 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."
...

I read/heard somewhere that he rarely used it at Mercedes until 2022. So there really could be something in the theory.

Will be very interesting to see what happens.

Yea for most of his time at Merc he's barely ever used the sim, hated it at Mclaren and has been pretty consistent on not liking it in interviews, in 2015 he said he didnt use the sim at all, just a few laps to test a new pedal. https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... Z4hYO6I2Hz

Completely trashed the simulator in a 2016 interview and also talked about how he hated doing it when he was at Mclaren https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/lewis ... 6/5042426/

And in a 2021 interview with Brundle said he had no interest in using the sim
https://www.grandprix247.com/formula-1- ... -simulator

The last reg set he started using it more after struggling to get the same feel he did with other generation of cars. It'll be great if he can go back to the old days of just getting the feel of the car but should wait to get a bigger sample size of races with him not using the sim too see if thats truly whats helping him more now.

[PlatinumZealot]

The last reg set he started using it more after struggling to get the same feel he did with other generation of cars. It'll be great if he can go back to the old days of just getting the feel of the car but should wait to get a bigger sample size of races with him not using the sim too see if thats truly whats helping him more now.

Knowing Hamilton he used the Ferrari simulator so regularly just to be polite to his new team, and maybe to compare to what he had at Mercedes. He seemed to suggest the Ferrari sim is miles better.

[gearboxtrouble]

I wouldn't pop the Champagne on Lewis' sim boycott being the magic bullet that suddenly turns the year back to 2018. I'd point out that Lewis has had issues with tire wear this season, probably as a result of sliding around more than Charles. This has flattered him in qualifying and hurt him in the races until now. Canada was a weird anomaly where it was more challenging to keep the tire temps above the bottom of the window (this really hurt Max during the VSC) than it was to keep them from overheating. Lewis' 2026 tendency to over heat the tires helped him a lot on Sunday in the cold temps we saw because he was able to keep his tires from falling out of the window.

[Mandrake]

I think it's a lot of convenient coincidences. Hamilton doesn't like the simulator. Ferrari probably suggested more simulator work since he didn't feel on top of things. He happened to ditch the simulator ahead of tracks where he is always good (China, Canada).

Would need a larger sample size. Imo, the simulator (or not) is not decisive for his performances. Hamilton never said there was anything wrong with Ferrari's simulator. He said it was a very good one. He's just not a simulator guy and the way things line up, he got a get out of jail free card to never touch the simulator again. Remember that Hamilton wasn't using the simulator that much last year and that hardly guaranteed a good weekend.

He literally said the car on track doesn't behave like it does on the simulator, though. This "driving feel" is different from numerical correlation. I'm not a race car driver but I can understand this.

Reminds me of a time when I temporarily moved from hand drawn art to using a stylus and digital pad... The friction on the stylus just didn't feel controllable.

You gave perfect example.
Actually the driver has to make correlation physical car/simulator to get the real "picture".
I can understand like that and Lewis does not have that link maybe, so why to lose time on the sim.

I think there is something to this that the driver is part of the correlation. In the COVID days when everybody would jump on Racing Sims instead of the real racing you could see many top class racing drivers struggle to adapt to the simulation. Others however managed to be quite excellent at it. This has to play a part in how beneficial simulator work is.

Have we heard anything from Leclerc that there is bad correlation between the sim and IRL for him?

[Sidiamal]

People are making entirely too much of the simulator thing. Lewis is an old-school driver from an era where the simulators were too primitive to do much in terms of honing in set-ups. He's been used his entire life to doing his set-up work through mileage on the track. He's far from the only one, Alonso also disliked using the simulator. For older drivers, they just have a different way of doing things and they've been doing it that way for longer than most of the grid has been alive. It's not something you can reprogram. Younger drivers like Norris or Leclerc who virtually drive more on the simulator than the track are used to the opposite.

It has very little to do with how good the simulator is, certainly it's not a proxy for a correlation problem. It's all about what the driver is used to and wants out of his preparation phase.

[catent]

I wouldn't pop the Champagne on Lewis' sim boycott being the magic bullet that suddenly turns the year back to 2018. I'd point out that Lewis has had issues with tire wear this season, probably as a result of sliding around more than Charles. This has flattered him in qualifying and hurt him in the races until now. Canada was a weird anomaly where it was more challenging to keep the tire temps above the bottom of the window (this really hurt Max during the VSC) than it was to keep them from overheating. Lewis' 2026 tendency to over heat the tires helped him a lot on Sunday in the cold temps we saw because he was able to keep his tires from falling out of the window.

I've been thinking the same thing, and Vasseur's comments and Albano's recent article largely confirms as much.

Leclerc was really struggling to get the tires up to operating temperature, while Hamilton was one of the few drivers on the grid who could keep the tires in a good temperature window.

This general trend tracks with what we've observed from Leclerc and Hamilton (going back to last season, too): Leclerc is gentler on the tires, is able to preserve them longer through stints, and these traits compound (in a positive way) in hot conditions. Hamilton, on the other hand, sees more degradation in hotter (or typical) conditions, but when the track cools, the two are much closer in performance because then Hamilton's higher-tire-energy driving style suits the conditions while Leclerc's lower-tire-energy driving style doesn't. We saw this to some extent in China, both in 2025 and 2026: in cooler, cloudier conditions, with relatively low track temperatures, Hamilton was much closer to Leclerc than at other times throughout the season.

I suspect Leclerc's front-happy, lighter-looser-rear preference, and the setup such a driving style demands, also contributes in part to this. Leclerc hates understeer and a rear that doesn't rotate, but in such cold/low-grip conditions, it may be necessary to have a more "planted" rear in order to generate tire temperature.

And then you have the track layout, which further contributes to the situation. Montreal is an extremely rear-limited track, basically no high-speed corners, lots of hard braking and traction zones, which lends itself to a rear-centric setup, and provides very few opportunities to generate tire temperature via cornering. It's a track Hamilton has historically thrived at, and he's more inclined towards a softer/planted rear generally speaking.

[DJ Downforce]

I wouldn't pop the Champagne on Lewis' sim boycott being the magic bullet that suddenly turns the year back to 2018. I'd point out that Lewis has had issues with tire wear this season, probably as a result of sliding around more than Charles. This has flattered him in qualifying and hurt him in the races until now. Canada was a weird anomaly where it was more challenging to keep the tire temps above the bottom of the window (this really hurt Max during the VSC) than it was to keep them from overheating. Lewis' 2026 tendency to over heat the tires helped him a lot on Sunday in the cold temps we saw because he was able to keep his tires from falling out of the window.

I've been thinking the same thing, and Vasseur's comments and Albano's recent article largely confirms as much.

Leclerc was really struggling to get the tires up to operating temperature, while Hamilton was one of the few drivers on the grid who could keep the tires in a good temperature window.

This general trend tracks with what we've observed from Leclerc and Hamilton (going back to last season, too): Leclerc is gentler on the tires, is able to preserve them longer through stints, and these traits compound (in a positive way) in hot conditions. Hamilton, on the other hand, sees more degradation in hotter (or typical) conditions, but when the track cools, the two are much closer in performance because then Hamilton's higher-tire-energy driving style suits the conditions while Leclerc's lower-tire-energy driving style doesn't. We saw this to some extent in China, both in 2025 and 2026: in cooler, cloudier conditions, with relatively low track temperatures, Hamilton was much closer to Leclerc than at other times throughout the season.

I suspect Leclerc's front-happy, lighter-looser-rear preference, and the setup such a driving style demands, also contributes in part to this. Leclerc hates understeer and a rear that doesn't rotate, but in such cold/low-grip conditions, it may be necessary to have a more "planted" rear in order to generate tire temperature.

And then you have the track layout, which further contributes to the situation. Montreal is an extremely rear-limited track, basically no high-speed corners, lots of hard braking and traction zones, which lends itself to a rear-centric setup, and provides very few opportunities to generate tire temperature via cornering. It's a track Hamilton has historically thrived at, and he's more inclined towards a softer/planted rear generally speaking.

In China 2025 Ham was slower than Leclerc with a broken wing so thats a null comparison

I fail to see why you would want a setup with a planted rear to get more tyre temperature, surely a looser rear will cause more sliding leading to higher temperatures.

[DJ Downforce]

I wouldn't pop the Champagne on Lewis' sim boycott being the magic bullet that suddenly turns the year back to 2018. I'd point out that Lewis has had issues with tire wear this season, probably as a result of sliding around more than Charles. This has flattered him in qualifying and hurt him in the races until now. Canada was a weird anomaly where it was more challenging to keep the tire temps above the bottom of the window (this really hurt Max during the VSC) than it was to keep them from overheating. Lewis' 2026 tendency to over heat the tires helped him a lot on Sunday in the cold temps we saw because he was able to keep his tires from falling out of the window.

I agree with this statement

Except that in Australia he had good race pace too in hotter conditions

[AR3-GP]

[Luscion]

I wouldn't pop the Champagne on Lewis' sim boycott being the magic bullet that suddenly turns the year back to 2018. I'd point out that Lewis has had issues with tire wear this season, probably as a result of sliding around more than Charles. This has flattered him in qualifying and hurt him in the races until now. Canada was a weird anomaly where it was more challenging to keep the tire temps above the bottom of the window (this really hurt Max during the VSC) than it was to keep them from overheating. Lewis' 2026 tendency to over heat the tires helped him a lot on Sunday in the cold temps we saw because he was able to keep his tires from falling out of the window.

I've been thinking the same thing, and Vasseur's comments and Albano's recent article largely confirms as much.

Leclerc was really struggling to get the tires up to operating temperature, while Hamilton was one of the few drivers on the grid who could keep the tires in a good temperature window.

This general trend tracks with what we've observed from Leclerc and Hamilton (going back to last season, too): Leclerc is gentler on the tires, is able to preserve them longer through stints, and these traits compound (in a positive way) in hot conditions. Hamilton, on the other hand, sees more degradation in hotter (or typical) conditions, but when the track cools, the two are much closer in performance because then Hamilton's higher-tire-energy driving style suits the conditions while Leclerc's lower-tire-energy driving style doesn't. We saw this to some extent in China, both in 2025 and 2026: in cooler, cloudier conditions, with relatively low track temperatures, Hamilton was much closer to Leclerc than at other times throughout the season.

I suspect Leclerc's front-happy, lighter-looser-rear preference, and the setup such a driving style demands, also contributes in part to this. Leclerc hates understeer and a rear that doesn't rotate, but in such cold/low-grip conditions, it may be necessary to have a more "planted" rear in order to generate tire temperature.

And then you have the track layout, which further contributes to the situation. Montreal is an extremely rear-limited track, basically no high-speed corners, lots of hard braking and traction zones, which lends itself to a rear-centric setup, and provides very few opportunities to generate tire temperature via cornering. It's a track Hamilton has historically thrived at, and he's more inclined towards a softer/planted rear generally speaking.

Thats not really been the case this year though, going off of ferrari's race reviews on their page, track temps in japan were 19c but lewis suffered really bad with wheel spin and deg where charles was over 3 tenths quicker while in China with a track temp of 38c he was the fastest car that wasnt a Merc. Either way if he's truly better without the sim id wait for a couple more races as the sample size of him not using the sim is still to small.