“I’m going to have a different approach in the next race,” Hamilton declared to PlanetF1.com and other accredited media following the Miami GP.

For Hamilton, what he is experiencing in the Ferrari simulator versus the real-life SF-26, does not align.

“Ultimately, it’s always correlation,” he added.

“We go on it \[the simulator\], and then you get to the track, and the car feels different when you get to the track.”

Hamilton was asked to expand on what he meant by not preparing for a race weekend properly. That led him to double down on his dissatisfaction with the Ferrari sim.

So much so, that Hamilton says he will not use it at all before the Canadian Grand Prix, dropping a major clue in regards to this new approach which the seven-time world champion says is coming.

“What I mean by it is that I spend time on the simulator – you know I don’t like simulators in general – but I was at the simulator every week on the build-up to this race, and working on correlation constantly.

“You go on it, you prepare for the track, you drive it, and you get the car set up to a certain place, and then you come to the track, and that setup doesn’t work."

“And on the Sprint weekend, for example, you’ve only got practice one. You don’t really want to veer off from your setup too far, like with a big suspension change. And so you stay with it, and then you make a change going into qualifying, and you’ve only got six laps to get on top of it.

“So in an ideal world, I should have started where Charles was at the beginning of the weekend, and I think we would have just had a stronger weekend from there on.

“I’m not going to go on the simulator between now and the next race. I’ll still go and hold meetings at the factory and stuff, but just going to back away from it for a little bit and see.

“When we went to China, I had the best weekend, and without sim.”

Eight

Hamilton is changing his approach ahead of Canada (back to China prep)