Lewis Hamilton followed through on his plan to ditch using Ferrari’s Formula 1 simulator ahead of this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Hamilton expressed his displeasure with Ferrari’s simulator in Miami, saying it was "sending me in the wrong direction".

The seven-time world champion, who has often shunned driving in the virtual world throughout his F1 career, vowed not to use the simulator in preparation for the Montreal weekend.

On Thursday in Montreal, Hamilton revealed he’d stuck to that no-simulator strategy despite calling Ferrari’s simulator an "amazing space".

He continued: "It is a very, very powerful tool and something that as a team, we continue to evolve. I think since I've been there, I've had a lot of input in some of this evolution and they’ve been really respondent and made loads and loads of changes, and we've just been improving it.

"With simulation, I feel that the goalpost is always moving. So I started driving the simulator in 1997, the first simulator. It probably didn't move, but we had force feedback in the steering wheel, and I remember it was at McLaren's old factory.

"And then when it moved to like the first real gen, they let me sometimes use it when I was in GP2. And then at McLaren, we used it relatively often, didn't again particularly enjoy it, but because they're kind of long days and a lot of laps. There's a point at which you stop learning when you're doing so many laps, for me personally.

"And then when I joined Mercedes, they were quite far off with the sim at the time. I didn't use it in all the championships that we won, barely used the simulator. Very, very rarely. And then it was 2020, maybe 2021, I decided to use it a little bit more.

"I think there's only ever been really one time that I've used the sim in these 20 years, that the set-up that I had on the sim was the exact set-up I used in qualifying and qualified pole. I think it was Singapore 2012 [with McLaren].

"So then all the other times, it's not quite perfect, but it is a powerful tool. I just think that since the last year, I used it every week. And more often than not, I felt, you do all the work on the sim and you get to the track, you find a set-up that you're comfortable with, you get to the track, and it's everything's opposite.

"So then you're undoing the things you've learned, some of the ways you've approached the corners, you have to shift and adjust set-up that you felt that was good on the simulator is not the same at the track sometimes. Sometimes it is. And so it's kind of hit and miss." 

What Hamilton focused on instead

No simulator work doesn’t mean Hamilton didn’t do any preparation for Montreal, as he instead focused on working through data with his engineers. 

"So I just decided for this one, I'm just going to sit it out and focus more on the data.

So there was just a lot of deep diving on, through corner balance, mechanical balance, corner approaches, brake balance, optimising the brakes, which had been a problem for me for some time, and that's led to really good integration with my engineers. 

"So it's not a tool that I'm saying I'm never going to use again. I think it's something that for sure we will continue to utilise, particularly on power deployment. 

"So most often what I've done for the last like six months, you'd go in after the weekend and you'd work on correlation. So that when we run it again, but then you go to the next track and it's slightly off sometimes.

"We'll see how the weekend goes. But, China, for example, I didn't have to do the same for China, and it was my best weekend."

Hamilton ended his wait for a first grand prix podium with Ferrari in China and currently sits fifth in the drivers' championship, with 51 points to team-mate Charles Leclerc's 58.