Lewis Hamilton has gone into the Canadian Grand Prix weekend without touching Ferrari's simulator — a deliberate decision that paddock sources say followed a blunt internal post-mortem of the Miami weekend.
According to a report from Slipstream Stories citing Ferrari's debrief notes, Hamilton's engineers were briefed on three separate SF26 problems on 13 May, all flagged by the seven-time world champion in the days after Miami. The first was the simulator itself; Hamilton's complaint was that the virtual car has stopped behaving like the real one, leaving him to chase balance from the wrong starting point every Friday.
The second issue was aerodynamic. Hamilton highlighted to engineers that Ferrari's front wing design looks visually different to the wings being run by Mercedes and McLaren at the front of the grid. The third was a hybrid deployment quirk that, by his account, is cutting battery power early on the straights — costing him three to four tenths before he even hits the brakes.
The context matters. Ferrari brought eleven new parts to Miami, the single biggest upgrade push on the 2026 grid. The new package improved chassis balance, with Charles Leclerc particularly quick through the low-speed sections at the Miami International Autodrome. But on the long runs to Turn 11 and Turn 17, every chassis gain was getting wiped out by Mercedes pulling three tenths back on a single straight.
That power gap is the part Hamilton cannot fix from inside the car — but the simulator complaint is the one he can act on. Slipstream Stories reports Hamilton has skipped the sim entirely between Miami and Montreal: no prep runs, no setup work, no matching sessions. The pattern he has pointed to is simple. His best 2026 weekend, a podium at the Chinese Grand Prix in April, came after a build-up where he did not touch the rig at all. His weakest qualifying sessions have followed the heaviest sim weeks.
The knock-on for Ferrari is bigger than one driver's prep. Every new part the Scuderia designs gets validated in the simulator before it reaches the car. If Hamilton is right that the virtual SF26 has drifted away from the real SF26, then the eleven parts Ferrari rushed to Miami were judged against the wrong baseline — and the next batch of upgrades earmarked for Montreal will be too.
Mercedes, meanwhile, are bringing a three-tenth upgrade of their own to Canada, according to the same report. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is dominated by long straights and heavy braking zones — exactly the layout where Ferrari's power deficit was at its worst in Miami, and exactly where any further Mercedes step compounds the problem at the front of the field.
Hamilton's call to bin the simulator is the most public sign yet that the Briton no longer trusts the bedrock of Ferrari's race-week routine. With Leclerc continuing to find time closer to what the rig is showing, the gap inside the Maranello garage is becoming as much about workflow as it is about pace. Canada will be the first weekend where Hamilton races on what he sees on Friday, rather than what the sim told him on Tuesday.
---
