Why Lewis Hamilton HATES the Simulator
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2024
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“I hardly ever drive the simulator”
Back in 2021, Lewis Hamilton admitted he barely uses the Mercedes simulator. Which seems bizarre. Surely, a seven times World Champion would be doing ANYTHING he could to find an advantage.
Max literally has a sim in his motorhome, and Lewis isn’t touching one. That’s weird right?
“I have no interest in the simulator”.
So why does Lewis avoid the sim? And is it hurting his performance? Let's get into it.
First things first, why is a simulator good for a driver? You might think it’s about learning circuits and racing lines, but there’s much more to it than that.
Verstappen, who uses the sim more than any other driver does a huge amount on the simulator, and doesn’t even use a test driver like others. He says “I don’t want a test driver to take over the simulator sessions, like other teams do. I want to do it myself, because everyone has their own driving style.”
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#LewisHamilton #SimRacing #Formula1 - Авто та транспорт
![Wolfram Physics Project: Working Session Wednesday, Apr. 29, 2020 [Finding Black Hole Structures]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SbDzqlOLIZA/mqdefault.jpg)
I think another key point to consider that you did not mention is the fact that Hamilton started racing in the era when a crazy amount of on-track testing was legal. By the time he debuted, he wasn't a rookie by today's standards. And I feel like this point of origin really matters in how he still views the simulator today.
Also an interesting thing people don't realise about the whole alonso vs hamilton thing. Hamilton got much more seat time than alonso.
@@kantina4765 are you like actually stupid alonso had 2 world titles and 6 years of experience when he first became teammates with alonso
I think that's an important point to make about why so many rookies nowadays go through the feeder series only to fall flat on the ice when they get to Formula 1. Hamilton had all the time in the world to physically prepare himself for his debut by racking up a huge amount of time in the car during testing. Modern rookies don't get that kind of opportunity to learn and prepare themselves. That's why they turn to the simulator, even though it still obviously is far from the same thing.
Who knows how different the rookies seasons of all these drivers in recent years would have panned out if they just had more time, like Mick for example. Would he have been so crash prone if he had the same amount of time to test as Lewis did in the 2000's?
@@kantina4765 Lets not act like Nando was missing out. He drove the previous championship winning car lol.
@@F1ll1nTh3Blanks a car with entirely different characteristics. I'm not saying hamilton is bad, just an interesting fact most people don't realise.
Him and max really are polar opposite, yet both incredibly fast
And yet they're also similiar
in everyway possible, in driving style, character, workflow/ethic.... no wonder they are so divisive amongst fans
@@stephen2282 and yet they're both so similar, they're both wicked quick, and sometimes have, uh questionable racecraft
@@stephen2282 But do you really think they're so different in their work ethic?
I think both Verstappen and Hamilton can be pretty strict about their expectations, how things are done and what they can contribute to the team apart from driving. Also they can be pretty strict about how the teammate should be handled which Lewis has lost a bit of a say on when George joined. Red Bull has a much clearer separation of number 1 and number 2 driver which also leads to trouble but hadn't Lewis "allowed" for George to be a bit more important than Bottas was before it would have led to an explosive team atmosphere.
So I think both are more similar than you think.
I think they are just from different era’s so they approach things differently.
I think it's a big generational thing, younger drivers seem to see an advantage. Verstappen especially is really into simracing and said it has helped him in real life racing, You could train certain senses, try lines and overtaking techniques without the IRL risk of a crash.
Alonso uses the sim a lot.
Yes, but Verstappen also just really likes sim racing.
"said it has helped him in real life racing"
Sure, but we don't know if that's true, that's his impression. We would have to produce a very large and expensive study consisting of children growing up to be professional racers and put one group to practice in the sim and the other to not practice at all, control for some other variables, and see if one group's track time correlates with the number of hours in the sim. That's not gonna happen, so we'll never really know.
@@rubenssz how would practicing lines, overtakes, entry/exit, for hours upon hours, not result in improving your IRL technique at all? Even if it’s marginal it’s still an improvement
@@copperandgold4674 We can say it could, but we don't really know, we don't have any data to compare the two scenarios
I've spent over 2000 hours on sims, but on my first irl track day I had a total sensory overload. I was completly off pace, even though I'm usually one of the "fast guys" in a sim. It is quite a bit different experience, however in the last session, once my brain started adjusting, I was rapidly improving.
after doing probably 100+ hours around nordschleife for several years on different sim, i set a 8:02 BTG on my 3rd lap. Official time from the manufacturer was 7:55. So it does help quite alot when we get used to the actual g-force and elevations :)
Sims are fantastic to become quite decent and get up to speed fast
It definitely takes some adjustment to go from sim to real life. I always feel like I have spider senses in real cars, which could easily lead to sensory overload. One of the biggest differences for me, though, is the sense of speed. Real life feels at least twice as fast.
@@M4RK_F what car were you driving?
@@tqracing thats because your real life can be affected if shit goes south. Your brain gets very aware when your at risk like that, thats where the focus comes from. Call it a survival instinct.
@@T3CC9 e90 m3
I can relate. As an simulation engineer for 20 years, the older gen engineers don’t trust simulation results but the new gen take simulation seriously.
Pilots are the perfect example of why simulators work. Emergencies are somewhat familiar that way.
Lewis could have been familiar with his suboptimal car. “I cannot connect with it” is simply unprofessional. That’s like a pilot saying: “Never been in a crashing plane before, sorry, don’t know, I cannot connect with it. I could have trained but it wouldn’t have been the same as this anyway.”
shouldn't serious engineers know the difference between 20 years of sims? the modern sim probably handles many orders of magnitude more inputs/outputs per second. i'm not an engineer and i know that computers 20 years ago have barely 1% the computational speed/memory space of today's computers - and that's not even specialised hardware. a custom-built sim should be capable of some pretty amazing detail these days and produce fairly reliable data. still incomplete ofc, but far far better than some 20 year old stuff.
Very true. We have equivalent situations in commercial air transport as well.
It's a generational thing. Still some of the older guys are like "...you youngsters think point and click fixes everything. That's not real engineering"
@@oldmanc2 Point and click is in no manner engineering. New products, many of them are poor in performance to what preceded them.
@@stephencurry8552 Agree completely
Max actually acknowledges that there's a difference between the sim and real world driving. His logic is that the sim does improve his driving as it helps you train other sensory input compared to real driving, while Hamilton thinks it doesn't help him. Max also says it keeps him as sharp as possible and that racing truly is his life. There was never anything else.
Hamilton felt it didn’t help him back when he was dominating question should be how does he feel about it now?
Max just proves the adage that the dumb things sports stars say in interviews are just that, dumb
I think that’s why the sim can be important to some drivers. It forces you to adapt to a different dynamic of driving where the sensory inputs are very limited. Now this may not aid or reflect directly in your pace in real life, but you are training your abilities to adapt to different scenarios which the ever changing factors of racing (weather, tires, car characteristics, etc) can pose a challenge. Max alludes to the adaptability part on the video Scott made about his sim experience as well. The focus of how you use the sim can influence the real life driving imo
I remember guys like Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson talking about why they race sprint cars and it’s same concept as the sim. It’s not meant to keep in tune with the car but more so to keep your race craft up to par. Certain skills like being about to read the track and anticipate drivers movement can translate from discipline to discipline.
F1 drivers would be so much cooler if they raced other disciplines regularly
@@andrewahern3730 Alonso would like a word with you
@baileysnow6031 That's why Alonso is the coolest F1 driver. He is actually doing other shit. Rather than just sticking to hyper engineered, hyper optimized masterworks of machinery. Alot of times, it's much funner and more interesting to drive absolute turds around at the limit.
@@ChefofWar33 i so hope he does the Indy 500 again
I remember people argued over the RB car being designed for Max. I understand why though, his driver feedback is great and he's a top 3 sim driver. + Working with Adrian Newey must be a sick combo.
Top 4. LaMelo Ball took his spot
why is people drinking so much Redbull Koolaid about Adrian Newey? Max doesnt step out of the simulator and tell Adrian to do x or y, he steps out of the simulator and tells one of Adrian's minions that he feels x or y. Adrian Newey probably doesnt hear about it, he is just one person, Redbull engineering team is a complete group with 100s of people, i know he is the lead behind those 100s of engineers but in that case people should praise Horner since he is in charge of Adrian and his people and another thousand from the factories. Oh and he is the one that lobbied the Aero design era and the budget cap era. Without any of those 2 Mercedes would be still on top.
@@quierover4locas I think the point is that Adrian has done it successfully for so many years. Workers in the engineering team change over time but Newey is constantly there. This makes him the only constant variable which directs most of the attention to him. And rightfully so.
Adrian Neway is a god. Rumour has it that he only has to touch the car to download information to it.
Well, at the end of the season we can conclude that all of the work definitely paid off...
I think a VERY important thing you failed to mention is that Hamilton started in F1 in an era where sim software was premature and much less accurate. Driving in the sim in 2007 was only useful for learning the track corners and maybe an idea of what gear to be in for each corner. (Hamilton said so himself in the press conference after his fist win in the Canadian GP, 2007). On track testing was far more relevant and useful to improve yourself and your car. Hence, Lewis and other drivers of his generation such as Alonso, never got into sim-work that much and learned to deal and adapt without it. In this way, perhaps not doing sim work actually helped them improve their legendary on-track adaptability!
Interesting, because I see him almost every day at iracing and he drives race after race, changing cars all the time. Maybe this helps him with his "legendary on-track adaptability".
@@maciejwierorzymski7500 Fernando, Lando, Max, Carlos and others are all day in iracing. Max even competed in rfactor until the Le Mans scandal. Others, like Stoffel, were well known names back in the day in rfactor world championships.
I would just like to point out that Alonso has in fact got into sim racing. He's a regular in multiple categories in IRacing
@@martimxavier9690 He has been competing in Iracing for like ten years.
@Jesús Fernández really? I thought he had gotten into it much more recently. It's good to know that the most experienced driver in F1 history has integrated sim racing in his training for so long
I started in real cars and got into sims later, I too struggled since I lost the feeling for the car in the seat and there's no way to replicate it. I strongly believe that its easier for a sim racer to get into a real car and get good than it is for a real driver to get in a sim and do good. With a sim driver, they will hop in a real car and have even more information to work with while they're used to working with limited information where a real driver will get into a sim and suddenly have to make due with much less. Its always case by case, have someone I race with who got into iRacing and sits in the 2000's for ir and another who got in the sim for the first time and shot to the 9000's for ir. It will sometimes just click for some people, and not for others.
I have really tried to get sim racing. More from an academic exercise to see if I could understand how people are benefitting, and party to see if I vould join in on a bit of social.... nope. Sims feel utterly broken and wholly unrepresentative of all of the several hundred vehicles Ive driven and ridden on track. How on earth kids are learning anything is beyond me. The steering feel is unilaterally complete rubbish. Any real vehicle that feels like a sim ought not be allowed off the trailer let alone onto the track. It remains a mystery how some people achieve repeatable lap times in sim, and how they talk about improvements that they alledge can be translated to real vehicles.... I am genuinely interested in sim 'feel' and or if this isnt all ' the emperor's new clothes' mumbo jumbo. Kinda heartened that Hamilton isnt a big advocate.
I have heard rumours that real racing is a lot easier than sims, and by what your saying it seems true. You only have your hands, eyes and ears to understand what is going, compared to your whole body.
I started in sims and moved to real life and it is indeed easier in real life. The fidelity of what you feel is much higher and more obvious in real life. It’s just easier to know exactly what grip the car has in real life.
@@2639263926392639 The cars themselves are veyr similar in performance, so things like braking, acceleration, cornering, where to shift, visibility (if you're in VR more so), and general vibe of the car (oversteery, understeery) helps you adapt faster as you are sort of familiar with these things. Sure you miss out on a lot of g-force, roll, slip etc. but you learn more about the track, speeds, shifting gears and everything else beyond the movement of the car.
*make do
I’m not a Hamilton fan, but I’d say he’s done pretty well without it lol.
Pretty well, given that he has beaten the simulated perfect lap time twice during real life quali.
@@mishka1313 Singapore 2018 and Monza 2020 right?
How did you get that stat? Not disputing it because both examples sound right but curious to know the source being the F1 nerd I am!
@@SiegfriedDerDrachentoter stfu, he was 8 tenths faster than bottas. It was an amazing lap. You're making it sound like an average lap
@@SiegfriedDerDrachentoter yeah only max can beat machine not lulu
To be fair Hamilton did say he didn't like simulators in 2021, then proceeded to non-scheduled intense simulator sessions before Silverstone 2021 (both qualifying and race) when he saw that the championship was going to be tight, and continued ever since................
When Max bypassed Leclerc in the rain @ Suzuka - Thats a move that he practiced in iRacing to see If it was possible. I think this is a good example that iRacing indeed can help drivers onc the track.
The fact that Max is ranked 3rd in the world at virtual racing is insanity
@@Lanse1984 and he's top 50 in fifa
@@Lanse1984 Is it? Being the best in the world is his literal job. It would be weirder if he wasn't considering how much time he spends in sims.
Impossible for him tho practice that move on Leclerc in iRacing seeing as it doesn't have rain...
dumbest comment to you sir
I think at the back-end of 2021 he said he used it a lot more, as he was pushing for the championship in every way. I remember him saying that he did a lot of work in the simulator and working out and working with the engineers to do everything he can
I think it was after the Austria double header when he and Mercedes got battered by Verstappen he started using it more
Yeh but he’ll say whatever sounds the coolest at any given time.
My son (who is 23) seems to benefit a great deal from the sims. To the point that when he goes to a real life track he's never been to before (but that he's driven on a sim), he can get within a tenth of the fastest drivers in pretty short order. Sim racing seems to be like sensory deprivation - and when sim drivers get onto real life cars they suddenly have all that other sensory information available to them. I'm, only privy to my son and his contemporaries who started racing at a time when sim racing games were already plentiful. These young guys seem to demonstrate that it's easier to go from a sim to a car than the opposite. In other words, the translation works a lot better going that way, because there is much less to unlearn, and much more to learn - and unlearning is much harder than learning. As a mental exercise, it's an amazingly valuable resource, and that's just one aspect.
As a pilot, retired by age-related vision loss I was excited when the recent MS 2020 sim came along. Thought I could re-live my experiences, but without gravity and the forces of nature the experience was rather hollow. You can be on final in a monster crosswind making all the right control inputs and nature can still sweep you away. Its mainly the terrifying forces working on your body that tells you you have exceed what is prudent or even possible
The sudden turn of the wind and you feel the rain hitting the left side of the plane and not the right... Or the nauseating negative Gs. Really hope that that can be replicated somehow in the future.
@@core-experiencewhen I fly quick turns I ask my wife to push my face against the chair. She says what for ? I say gggggggeez just do it.
@@core-experience you could... but maybe only with a massive setup that airlines used
It could be a generational thing. Seb himself said he had a simulator but wasn’t “focused on a virtual career.” Hamilton and Seb might be the last from that generation. Norris, Russell, Verstappen are from a new generation that concurrently spend a lot of time in the sim and now sets the precedence that all new drivers to be good on the sim.
but how about alonso??
@@el-danihasbiarta1200 Alonso is also from a new generation, he's the best rookie out there now
Q
@@omurize2007 a rookie who's dating a swift
Maybe I’m alone out here, but I just don’t enjoy video game racing as much as slamming gears and throwing a car around in real life to even want to get great at it. The lack of sensory inputs just kills it for me.
Great to see more insight into how different drivers improve and practice away from the track.
They do come in handy, for me at least.
I had the opportunity to run in the 2007 Nurburgring 24 Hour and did about 150 laps in rfactor to learn the track. It helped immensely.
I also use it to help me practice keeping the car under control when it gets out of shape - I got sick of running into the fences in the sims so I got good at timing the brakes, throttle, and steering to guide the car away from the fence so I could keep going. And that skill has helped in real life as well.
I saw someone comparing sim racing and racing with running on a treadmill and running on a road. It’s definitely different but you will get better. I totally understand the difference to irl and sim racing, I do both aswell but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn anything from sim racing.
One thing I think you can learn A LOT from online sim racing is how people will react to different scenarios. This is something no one will ever really master and it’s something you will constantly improve on the more you drive with others
max is a sim racer and plays sim games all day its like a hobby for him that's why he doesn't mind doing it.
Nonono, F1 is a hobby to his sim racing career.
@@tqracing nonono, sim racing is a hobby to playing tea time with Penelope.
@@danilicious2308 they are no match to the somalian nords.. ohh no he is coming the big chungus run awayyyy
@@danilicious2308 Yeah, you might right about that.
nonono he makes F1 money so he can pursue his sim racing hobby.
Lewis is also from a time with basically unlimited testing, and he made his debut as a 22 year old. If I had to guesss I’d say 14 or 15 current drivers had their debut at an earlier age, (shit Max was only 17) & with testing restrictions it kind of makes sense for the new generation to implement the simulator as much as possible.
It’s pretty simple. It’s a generational difference. Most drivers who started with real racing and then tried simulators usually have problems with adapting to it, meanwhile most drivers who started with simracing or simultaneously started racing in both sim and real racing usually have it much easier to adapt. I know it because it was my case 😄
Jimmy Broadbent comes to mind with this. He's even said pretty much what you've said too.
See also: his video with Ben Collins. Ben struggled to get to grips with sim racing. If I remember right, it was kind of like something about it felt a bit off to him.
VR helped me a lot. I can't Sim race without it. Completely agree with the brake feel as well. Still so hard to feel a lockup. Also not sure if iRacing is just funky with brake lockups. I find once you grab a wheel it's really hard to unlock it. Almost feels like you accelerate with a brake lockup haha
He’s absolutely spot on, vision is one of the last senses you use in terms of car control!
I remember with my very amateur sim set up and even using the controller drifting was as easy as driving in a straight line but after trying it for real and with my body subjected to forces I hadn’t anticipated, I found it a lot harder to concentrate and find the sweet spot!
Practice and getting myself used to the physical feeling made it easier over time but I’ll never forget the first time I got a real car sideways, such a rush of forces exerted on my body in ways I hadn’t even thought of and how my lower back was giving me so much information on the car’s position! A wonderful feeling!
I must get another RWD manual car asap!
I have 400+ hours on my sim, and i have just driven once on track (a 4 stroke kart, nothing fancy, but good enough). Driving irl seemed much easier for me than on the sim, i had so many more information about the car's behaviour, g forces helped me being more consistent and understanding better what the car was doing and how much i could push.
When i came back home and did some laps on my sim, everything felt so numb and i wasn't enjoying it as much
Driving irl came so natural to me at a time i didn't even have a driving license. From that day on i convinced myself that i'd be a better irl driver than a sim one
That's always been my issue with sim racing, G-forces. What I've learned is that like a blind person, when you are missing senses the remaining ones try to compensate. In sims this relates to the wheel, gauges, sounds and the cars vector relative to its motion.That's all you have. It's all the information you need, It's you are just not used to using it that way. Why would you when the seat of your pants in more intuitive. You don't have to think about it. What's interesting is it forces you to look at driving from a different mindset, you notice things that didn't matter before but are essential now. Lewis is right, there is no replacement for G-force. However what you get from not having it is a better understanding of all of the other cues and what they mean to your car.
I drive with the senses of my wii wii.
I’m pretty sure it was mentioned recently that he has started doing more sim work lately.
I think he said this in 21 when he didn’t need it but recently since 2022 he’s been doing it not because of helping his pace and racecraft but more so to find a setup to work for the car and fix the issues
I enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing Scott 🌞
it's no coincidence that the red bull is perfectly adapted to Max's driving style.
I had the same thought when watching the video. Hamilton always says the Merc isn't suited to his style of driving but then proceeds to not give them loads of sim data to help the designers design something suited for him? While i don't think time in the sim would help his driving it sure helps the engineers. I think he's kinda shooting himself in the foot a little. It's notable that Russell does spend time in the sim and finds the Merc more suited to him than Hamilton does. Coincidence?
@@darransmith32 since 2021, Hamilton has been constantly showing IG stories of himself doing sim work. So your statement isn’t exactly true.
@@darransmith32 i dont think so. The merc cars have never been suited to one driver and neither is it suited to george this year. They put the best package out there hence why lewis and george are evenly matched over their times together. They are both just good drivers who can adapt to any car easily.
if thats true, during the first half of the 2022 season max and redbull were saying the opposite. its not that easy lol
@@darransmith32 Hamilton is doing sim work, but he doesn't necessarily enjoy it compared to driving a real car (given unlimited testing).
I think with enough time in the sim you can sort of develop a seat of the pants feel. It's like the brain starts to fill in the gaps of information that is missing. So you have the forces through the steering wheel, visual ques and maybe even some tactile feedback through the seat. Then, when you get really tuned in to the simulator, the brain fills in some of the gaps.
This last part is probably why some struggle with it. They don't get to the point of being deeply in tune with the sim, and therefore feel disconnected.
I have many examples of when I can drive based on information that doesn't actually exist in the sim. One thing that comes to mind is feeling rear getting light. Say for example last corner at Oulton Park where you pass a crest. With many cars the rear gets really sketchy there. I can't feel it through the steering wheel. There's not really much in terms of visual ques, except for the attitude of the car. Still, I can get on the throttle keeping the rear just on the limit. That's something I feel more with my gut and my butt than anything else.
btw when I drive sim, the wheel is the first sense I use to detect oversteer, unlike what the video suggest with vision. You often microadjust as well on the wheel such that it visuals does not even show the slide anyways. I wonder if this is the same for others as well
This was before dd flooded the market. so now we rely on the ffb that has improved a ton recently
@@sethhu20
Great video as always!
u can add bass shakers and feather weights to the pedals and overall chair to improve all the feels u need.
overall 4 to 5 good bass shakers around ur seat and "chassis" can help u a ton with feelin the road and car.
the spinning feather weights on each pedal give u even more understanding of the car.
most sim racers even the crazy ones with shaking ground, dont have bass shakers somehow. but u can see them often in low budget sim rigs cause they are cheap and effective.
I tried recreational karting for the first time a few years ago as an adult and it's crazy how in-tune you become with the machine when driving. You feel every track imperfection. You know precisely where the limit of grip is, you can feel it. You know exactly what all 4 tires are doing at all times. You can feel when you lock up and slide under too much braking. I can see the logic in both sides with Max and Lewis when it comes to the sim
Could you introduce more about 'computer simulations' for F1? How does it work and what's the difference than a simulator? Thanks.
You replace a _driver_ with a _bot_ that uses *monte carlo* (random) and then have millions of itterations.
@@RogerKeulen There's no bot model that can replace a driver. That's the ultimate reason why there's a real driver in the simulator. Computer F1 simulation doesn't work in the way you described.
They just do data analysis. Like complex tire modeling. It’s one way Mercedes developed DAS. They simulated it’s effect using computer simulations, not just a driver in loop sim.
@@LoganLeGrand The key is, how do they do data analysis based on complex models? What are the methods for the analysis?
Its generational. When Hamilton was coming to the sport sims wasn’t good as they are rn. And had unlimited track tests. But now it’s different. Sims have vastly improved. That’s one of the reasons that Verstappen is able to maintain a consistent faster lap time than the others.
I mean, if I was getting paid to drive on the weekends, I'd probably live on the simulator, in the gym, and pestering the engineers like inspector Seb 😂
I feel like the "feeling in your body" the racer was talking about was the forward momentum you get when letting off the gas witch games simulate but cant be simulated in person but it certainly helps people that dont know how to drive learn how to control a car easier and i know from experience but it did feel weird cuz i wasnt looking at signs as much since i was used to looking at the road XD
I feel like another reason why he's not as bothered with going to the sim just to make sure development direction will go his way is that he's probably trusted Mercedes enough that he knows the team can already try to make a car that suits him and helps him win. Even with the mess this year and last year, it's also where the habit part comes in. Even if he wants to go to the sim again, he'd probably see that as something that's alient to him anyway. Then again it could also be that the gains he could make driving in the sim are being outweighed by the cost of him driving in the sim (in time, energy, etc.) especially when you have that much experience like him on many different circuits that some of the younger drivers can't even drive on.
It’s just for some people. I’m not Lewis Hamilton but I realized when I improved my track driving it improved my sim driving as well. Sim racing is more like testing out ur theories of how the car would react and u apply it back to when u drive
Asking Lewis why he doesn’t use stimulator is like Asking Neo if he watched Matrix 😂
I race in IMSA. The SIM is great for learning a track, brake points, and getting up to speed quickly when you arrive at the real track, but not great for improving your actual technique or driver skills, in my opinion. I do still use it before every race, as a refresher so its a good tool but just as another of many tools.
Always excellent videos 🤯
I'm surprised Lewis doesn't use the sim on the new tracks before the race weekend just to learn the course at least. Then again that may be the few times he does use it.
I always thought that simulator work was more about car set up and development than driver development anyway.
One thing folks have to realize is that Corrections at the Limit are done unconsciously. The conscious mind is too slow at racing speeds. The conscious minds job is to supply data to the brain, looking ahead especially. So if a Simulator can’t supply the tactile inputs that the subconscious reacts to, hams correct, it Could get ones reactions a tiny bit behind. Obviously fabulous drivers, especially the younger drivers who grew up with Video Games, know how to make it all work for themselves.
I not sure if hamilton is saying that it just slows him down, perhaps it more like he fears learning bad habits or uprooting the ones that he believes brought him success. and there are certain habits that are not just about reacting to the car... him making predictions such that he creates a stable platform when approaching a corner for example does somewhat rely on reacting to the live sensations coming through the car and his body but allot of it is muscle memory and thought patterns also.
That's what I think is going on here. You've got the older drivers saying vision isn't as important as other senses because that's how they grew up learning to drive. But younger drivers that might have had their first racing experience from video games have learned to rely on their vision more and hence learned how to use it subconsciously over other senses more. When they hop in a real car, all that previous skill is still there but now they have additional senses that might cause confusion at first until the brain figures out how to use it properly again. All the foundational handling skills are still there though which I think allows them to progress at a much faster rate.
Anyone driver claiming sim doesn't have real benefits doesn't understand how adaptable the brian is, especially the younger you force it to adapt to something. The brain can get very good at predicting how it's moving in 3D space or other things are from visual ques knowledge of how things behave alone, but it's never going to get there if it can rely on other senses to more easily fill in the knowledge at first. That's just something older drivers won't get to experience without lots of extra work compared to someone who grew up doing it.
You do the same thing in a racing sim. Do you race at a high level at all? You have to make split second decisions just like you do IRL.
He also has significantly more experience over everyone (except Fernando) in on track Formula 1 driving. He was already racing at the top level when some of these guys were barely walking.
That AND he's a 7 time world champ, he KNOWS how to race, so he probably puts his focus on other ways to improve his game and to compete better.
It's the same with flightsims. I love DCS and I fly the Yak-52 in the sim at times. After having had a real aerobatics flight in an actual Yak-52 it felt completely different. Feeling the plane wobble in the air and feel the G-forces when doing a looping or tight turn, it's almost impossible to replicate that :)
i agree that the g forces are absolutely a major part of driving and you can't get that in the simulator, but even with my basic set up i don't drive with my eyes, i drive mostly through the wheel and hands, vision is definitely not what i use to react to oversteer, if you set up the force feedback properly that should be your first instrument for detecting either understeer or oversteer, if you're using vision as your first instrument to react to these things then either your technique sucks or your set up does, brake feel now that is harder to simulate but there is hardware out there for that
that being said i'm sure in f1 cars the gap between what the sim can do and what you actually do when driving irl is i'm sure even greater
Totally agree. Who uses vision to detect oversteer!? Always found this type of comment strange and manufactured. Of course you use the force feedback first.
I remember hearing that Michael Schumacher also did not use the simulator during his stay at Mercedes. For what i have heard, he only used it for quintessential setup tests.
Sim racing has come a long way since Schumacher raced..
Michael got motion sickness from it, that was one of the main reasons.
I felt that after driving in a sim for so long I was much better when I was actually on track because I could feel so many more forces and it felt like the car was talking to me a lot more. I could feel the grip and slip so much more.
Max spoke a few times about the benefits of sim racing. He said: I learned a lot about steering input to be as smooth as possible. He is one of the fastest out there, but some are better in certain ways and learns a lot from this. I think you can see this in tracks like red bull ring where the layout is simple and short. Steering input is so important here to scrape every 100th out of the car.
Hamilton had the benefit of access to unlimited real world testing in his rookie years, so maybe that plays a part in the reason why he doesn't look up to the simulators like the drivers who came in after unlimited testing was banned would have.
I want my son to try karting when he's older. This is something I've often thought about.
3:13 most realistic sim i used was in a arcade and it had a subwoofer below it along with the hydraulic things and good speakers and a direct drive wheel with 3 4K monitors infront of me so when i began to lose control i felt it in my stomach before i even looked at the screen
So true, i friend of mine drives alot of iracing in he's Sim, but i drive tracks in real life. And i find it alot harder to brake on the edge in the Sim then in real life. I can't feel the g forces and the feeling even thought he has a very good setup is just not enought to feel the locking before it happens. But i do think racecraft, track knowledge, positioning ect. are things a sim can help you with. But driving on the edge every single lap seems more like gamebeling and mastering the game mechanics then mastering you'r own skill. You learning to deal with the game, and extraction the most out of it. But there will always be a little bit left out because of the lack of g forces and a motion rig is just not good enough(also most motion rigs don't have the screens mounted at the rig, so the rig moves but the image does not (very distracting).
The guy is 38 and has raced at the highest level for almost 25 years. He is driving and racing the real car all year long. He does not really need to develop his skills with something that is not close enough to the real thing. For 99% of driver those cheap laps are a good thing but for him It's pretty clear it's a bit pointless apart from planning next year structural changes to the car.
For 7 years he could just show up and win… that’s the reason he never used the sim. In ‘21, when his back was up against the wall, he started to train in the Sim before race weekends, and when he did, he looked absolutely at his best.
"Show up and win" not like he had to beat rosberg each weekend? Or 2018/17 where the ferrari was super quick on a multitude of tracks? Cut the crap lol
This is why I love sim racing and motorsport
For my experience learning read driving by using a sim racing also help me doing go karting looking at the racing line
The only issue I have with the you don't feel everything argument and your vision is what reacts first if you train yourself to react on the other things first then it becomes a lot more immersive and a lot more realistic. For example yes at first it's very hard to tell when the brakes are locking up however once you get used to how it works in the Sim / game you start to notice how it's going to work based off how your controller vibrates or how the steering wheel feels it's not 100% one one but what you have to do to counteract is. Train yourself to drive on feel in a sim and you'll be a faster driver
You know its deadly serious when even the pro himself doesnt have interest in the sim
in the end, they probably get to drive real race cars more often than we do sim cars
But there is a pro that have interest in the sim, and is also successful in real driving. I think this is very individual.
Ehh, i think it's more about the individual themselves, a case by case scenario if you will. Lewis is just a complete opposite to someone like Max who does a lot of simulation or a lot of sim racing when he's not inside a car just for an example.
It's just the matter of mindset
I think it’s a problem with older generation drivers And it is understandable. Every human will run out of flexibility when they age.
This. No one knows, but training in a new method can actually set you back no matter how good the training is objectively, especially at his level.
@@davidc750 maybe training on the sim will somehow improve your irl driving skills. Maybe aim drivers learn new tricks and it helps them to tackle their irl driving differently. Who knows. But something’s for sure and it’s that old habits die hard and as you age, it’ll get more effort to learn new ways, specially if it’s something you’ve done from childhood.
New generation of drivers are all completely familiar with gaming and that’s why they’re more in tune with the sim.
I don’t think it has anything to do with his level. Because of the fact that younger drivers are much better with the sim and it’s no coincidence.
alonso goes karting instead of simulator.
@dick harris I believe if drivers at my level (Who has seen little bit of seat times on track days and regular autocross participant), despite my mid-30 age proper Sim training would definitely up my game, and if I had opportunity to do so I would jump on that and try it out. My best guess is at Hamilton's level and age he may lose more than gain by changing his training methods since his method may be unorthodox in current training paradigm, as there are many different ways you can improve your game. With that in mind, I think we agree more than disagree, where I completely agree with you on challenges as oldbees learing new things, and I also believe one's skill level and evaluation of gain/loss by accepting new training program can also act as a deterrence.
@@davidc750 in that sense, I don’t think that we disagree at all.
I think I could feel the difference in how the tyre sidewalls were deforming after being inflicted with something awful by Kwikfit (one of those where you've ordered tyres, turn up and have to choose an alternative). I had to go through corners 10mph slower to feel like I wasn't going off the road.
I doubt whether a sim would cover something in the feels like that ...
If the sim have weight transfer feeling conveyed through the FFB and can convey the chassis flex reactions along with loss of grip, the braking and weight transfer feelings can be learned (if said sim is configured to convey more then "steering rack feeling" only), even tho not realistic "to a wheel feeling", it is a way to know and understand what the car is doing if one dont have all the other aparatus to feel everything else (and G forces is a completely different thing in that matter, virtually impossible to simulate the feeling with any piece of equipment)
I think I understand. Compared to real-life, even the most sophisticated sim could feel 'canned' to someone on the top tier. No sim can truly replicate every tiny detail of the real thing, so Lewis said that he prefers to focus on dealing with the latter. It's his choice.
I'm with Hamilton here but I'd still do the sim in the off seasons at least.
0:37 Wow! I didn't know *Max doesn't have a testsimulator driver for his car!* Thanks fort letting me know!
We see foreign drivers come to Mount Panorama, Bathurst, never having driven there before yet they do great times straight away. The reason of course is that they have learnt this subtle but scarily fast circuit on a simulator. I would think that for a F1 driver a simulator would give a great circuit familiarity refresher course at least. In F1 every tiny bit counts.
He hates it and Verstappen loves/is a master at it. 🤔. I think he has an argument but also being a master at vision in a sim can obviously help you on the track. It basically trains different muscles. It’s like a football player doing ballet/dance to help with footwork. Sometimes you can specialize but after a certain point you get so good that being multidisciplinary can help you improve at a quicker pace.
That’s debatable. For example, a driver could start using inputs that make them faster in the sim that would be slower or detrimental in a real F1 car. Gaining muscle memory for these sim inputs could impair real life performance. Lewis has talked numerous times about how the feeling of g-forces is critical for driving an F1 car at the limit (obviously). Without that sensation in your body, the sims could be genuinely useless or even detrimental to real life driving. I’m sure Max would say his style of driving an F1 car in the sim is quite different to how he races the real car. Max knows there’s a difference between the two and I’m sure keeps the techniques within their respective worlds. He certainly approaches sim driving with a very different style because he’s well aware of the differences. The only areas I see sims improving real driving is focus and endurance (keeping the focus and training the arm muscles with a direct drive wheel), but these are things all F1 drivers will already be more than great at anyways. Training the eyes would be mostly detrimental for muscle memory in real racing, the feedback just isn’t enough.
It’s an analogue versus digital thing. To me the digital simulation never matches the real thing so I’m with Hamilton on this.
Can’t wait for race week🔥🔥
I completely agree!! If I could feel what the car was doing I would have the additional input needed to drive better. With Gran Turismo 7 and the Logitech G29 wheel there is so much sensory input missing.
So, what you’re saying is the most important “sensor” in a race car is the driver’s arse?
Indeed
Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me the sim would sharpen your visual skills as the handling of the car goes.
Being a seasoned race driver is already going to have well developed "seat of the pants" feel for the car. It would stand to reason that a sim would elevate your visual cues to where you have another sensory input to tell you what the car is doing.
Please do one of those driver style analysis videos of Kimi.
While what Lewis is saying is impressive, sim is already a crucial component to a driver and teams.
If sim is only like 70% of the real thing (and I’m sure it’s closer then that) then there are great benefits of using it.
Turkey 2021 for example, RB’s setup was a disaster, they were super slow in all FP sessions, and Albon literally spent one whole night before qualifying in the sim, trying out different setups until they found something decent. So sim (and Albon) literally saved the day for RB.
Besides that sim is just great for a driver to stay in shape during winter break, or just to prepare for a race.
For example Baku is coming up, and if Max is driving every day 50-80 sim laps around Baku and Russell is just chilling somewhere of course Max will benefit from that, but racing has million other factors of course. But still that can’t take away benefits from using sim, and they are huge.
He just wants to chill
Yes he cares more about his fashion
@@nixxol oh no, how could that be!?? clown
Lewis is really like McQueen and Max is like Jackson storm. 😂
I've been playing Racing sim since Gran Turismo 3. GT4 and GT5 are my favorite racing sim games ever. What I learned about Racing Sim is that it gives you the knowledge of racing. You cannot gain the real-life experience of racing. GT4 was the biggest skill advancement for me because driving with sim cars became more better. I learned how to take lines, how race against bots, what happens during under and oversteer and etc. Eventually I maxed out my racing skills on GT4 and GT5 so it was time for track racing. Which I went to the tracks with my 92 Civic as I experienced everything from G-force, rolls, understeer and so on. With real-life racing, you can feel the tires, the tire pressure, the brakes, the steering wheel feedback, the engine and especially the vibrations.
Having both is crucial to stay on top of your game. There are a lot of days where I cannot go to the track so I just play GT5 for 1 hour to keep my racing skills consistent. The great thing about Racing Sim is that you can drive on tracks that you would never be able to unless you have a lot of money. You can race with sports cars that you will likely never own. And you get to crash without major consequences. The bad thing about Racing sim is that all cars drive the same no matter what brand or how much horsepower it has. A FR will drive like an FR and an FF will drive like an FF. No matter if its a Ferrari or S2000, they will drive the same in a Racing Sim because there is no real-life physical limitations to them. Other than that, racing sims gives majority of us people the ability to race on tracks that we will never be able to do in real life.
Many who newbie's to Motorsport and Formula one in particular, one of the main reason Lewis Hamilton have done so well, is because of Ron Dennis.
When Dennis took Hamilton under his wing, Ron taught and sent him out on how to really dominant many categories before F1.
This is one person, many do not talk all about Hamilton's career.
I think it's a mistake not to use the simulator. Lew finished a winless P6 season behind Sainz, Russell, LeClerc, Perez and Verstappen -who ALL won a race and ALL used the simulator to maximum benefit.
@Warden Cobb And yet he his more wins, poles and podiums than all of them combined. Maybe, just maybe he knows what he's doing.
@@Bahamuttiamat Or maybe, just maybe, he had the fastest car for almost a decade, by a mile.
@@asaness193III Kinda like schumacher, vettel, senna, fangio, clark, prost, etc etc etc. How many races was max winning before 2021? How many is he winning with the rocketship he's had since last season. Nice try..
I'm pretty sure the sim does help. Probably why George is quicker 👀
George and Lewis have raced in the same car for 25 races now. Of those 25 races, please list the tracks that george was quicker in. This should be good 😂😂😂
@@andrewmelton2686 I donno but he finished above him last year...
@carl595 ah yes because points tell the whole story. I guess we can conclude that ocon is faster than alonso also then 💀
@@andrewmelton2686 And he's been out qualified by him 3 times out of 3 so far this year
@carl595 but ham destroyed him in quali head to head last year ? 😂
F1 drivers are crazy good, they don't really need the simulator. At their level, a handful of laps at most are mostly enough to be on pace. Alonso and Hamilton were even said to need only one lap to beat the laptime set by McLaren's reserve driver who spent hours working on it. Those who can't do that simply don't reach F1 anymore. And the very last few drops of pace to be found can then only be found at the track, as no sim are close enough to real life for that (it's not only a matter of models, just changing the track temp by a few degrees can be enough to completely mess up the car, forcing drivers to alter their inputs anyway, so you'd need both perfect models + perfect forecast of conditions which is impossible). Iirc, top drivers who use commercial simracing do it for their racecraft, to strengthen focus, for learning the basics of setups and for fun, rather than driving training per se.
But F1 simulators, which Hamilton was mainly referring to are multimillions rigs with physical models developped in house, which can only be used one at a time, i.e. it can't simulate races. F1 teams spend millions on their sim not because it helps their drivers, but because it helps the *engineers*. Those high-end simulators give them a completely controlled environment; unlike in real life, every parameter can be controlled and modified at will, allowing teams to identify precisely the effect of each variable, which has been invaluable for setup and development. Also, from tidbits I read from F1 engineers, there isn't really any need to replicate the G-Forces (which would be a massive undertaking); the most important thing is to replicate roll, pitch, and especially yaw; i.e. the handling characteristics of the car. The lack of G-forces just makes it less fun but is not necessarily an issue, things like latency for example are more of an issue, hence why F1 teams aren't using VR: it's too slow.
Now for more reasonably skilled people, I'm sure simracing is a huge help, if only because it allows you to have some seat time without spending a fortune.
With doing track days and autox events, I find it so hard to drive my "sim" which my seating position is terrible. maybe one day ill get the hang of it. I hate the lack of feeling as in speed and slip in a rear car.
I guess he didn't need a sim when he was driving a car that was 0.8s faster per lap than the rest of the grid in Q3 and Mercs were finishing with 40s between them and the 3rd place, wouldn't hurt to use one now tho
30 years ago drivers like Prost, Senna, Mansell, Piquet, the Schumacher brothers and other F1 drivers didn't have simulators, the used practice sessions to learn the tracks, but today to cut costs they use the simulators, and everything today is about the budget.
back in the day they had unlimited testing time, nowadays you are only allowed to run the car in official sessions (and a shakedown at the start of the year)
Back in the day Ron Dennis "hired" helicopters to help dry the testing track faster so Hamilton can do more fast laps before his rookie season :DD
@@MisoElEven Like I said it's all about the budget, because of the cars don't get the track time and driver's performance is hurt, b ut Verstappen can't tell the difference between the simulator and the track so he drives like he's in the simulator still.
@@MisoElEven still schooled the champ and made him salty since 😂😂😂😂
If someone was salty for that long I’d take advantage of that
Not a hamilton fan, but i agree with him on this. On the flip side you get time on wheel and button control.
It’s like the Cars movie new gen taking on all sims vs the old gen working physically.
The value of the sim for drivers isn't to be a better driver, but to improve the skill of learning to adapt quickly. This is pretty obviously reflected from Hamilton's underperformance in this new F1 era, where he dominated the previous era, but has not been able to adapt as quickly as others.
This💯
The “driving” bit might be a bit different but the “racing” bit is exactly the same between sim and real life. Its actually harder to race in the sim due to limited senses that you get. Your opponent are also harder as they can practice more and have no fear of death so they likely to go all out where some might chicken out in real car.
So sim may not improve your driving but it definitely will improve your race craft.
Think about it, between the GP Hamilton did not participate in any races,
Max probably had at least 20-30 races in the top professional sim racing league and it shows…
Hamilton is done.
Have to agree. It's no coincidence I am sure how insanely quick Max is to get up to speed in any real life session. I'm almost surprised he doesn't confuse real life with the sim sometimes, lol.
"Hamilton is done" LOL you're saying this about the 37 year old that took Max to the last race in Abu Dhabi and would've had his 8th and retired had it not been for FIA incompetence? You say this when you have the eyes to see the obvious superiority of the RB car to every car in the field? If you weren't short sighted and potentially foolish you'd know that we don't even know what Leclerc would do to Max if he had a similarly performing car and competent team. Try being just a bit more objective and rational.
@@Melon623 objective and rational? Like accepting the fact that he lost the WDC to Max in 2021, had a winless season in 2022 and is now having difficulties beating his own teammate in 2023?
Yes, Lewis Hamilton is done both objectively and subjectively.
@@Melon623 Also note, Lewis Hamilton lost WDC in 2021 while driving a *CHAMPIONSHIP WINNING CAR*
@@tonamg53 Mate, they were BOTH championship winning cars :'D (both capable of) How else did Max manage to challenge for the win? You don't do that in a backmarker. And they both had their share of human mistakes but what actually lost Lewis the WDC was a literal non-racing interference (Masi).
Lewis is from an era where Sims were not used often and it was on track testing. Max is from an era where Sims are common. I'd like to see how often Kimi or Alonso use Sims.
Alonso is the exception. He is on the sim as much as the young guys.
Just leave Kimi alone, he knows what to do
Max is younger and grew up playing video games. Lewis started with remote control cars
Lewis liked to pretend he didn’t need the sim when he was winning championships. Now that his car isn’t the best anymore he’s in the sim way way more. Isn’t a sim a useful tool in developing the car for engineers?
It is nowdays,while i get why he doesn't like it its just a different approach,Max also knows its different but the things that are similar or same he uses them to improve
He said as much himself, the sun to him is more of a development tool not only for the car but for improving procedures and operations within the team more than it is the driving
Isn't it also really important for learning tracks? For example the new Las Vegas.... With even less practice times in the future sims become more important.
@@Hani_Santa absolutely. That’s why every new track we roll up too Max is 2 seconds a lap faster then everyone in the first 5 mins of FP1. Everybody feeling out the track then there’s Max doing lap times that’ll be close to Q3 times on his first set of laps lol.
He didn't 'need' to pretend. The whole point of Formula 1 is to win. It doesn't matter whether you use simulators or not to get there so long as it delivers on-track results.
Simulators help to train yourself in understanding a wide range of cars.
And it showed. Now everyone knows Lewis is a limited driver in general, great driver in great cars.
However, a “GOAT in F1 in great cars” is not the same as a GOAT in F1 in general.
Lewis choosing to not use simulators destroyed his legacy, all documentaries in the future will show his weaknesses, will show Russell joining and matching his pace straight away. And outperforming him in equal sub-optimal machinery. It will show Lewis saying “I cannot connect with this car” while Russell loved driving it and connected perfectly fine.
Back in the days without simulators Lewis was great in suboptimal cars. Now with the new generation the level raised and Lewis is no longer average at all. He’s far below par.
Dutch commenting and you could already tell what was coming..
@@sadikurrahman4833 Because you pay attention. If Lewis would pay attention to how suboptimal cars drive he could have seen the issues coming.
But he has no interest.
It’s all the same mechanism.
It’s like how I notice you don’t give arguments and reply accordingly.
@@valkenburgert how is Lewis “far below par” ?
@@valkenburgert 😂😂😂😂riding max so hard. The delusional comments are towards the bottom no wonder yours is one of them
Tell me who has max had as a competitive teammate?
Who’s ahead in points between the Mercedes’ drivers? I thought max fans said ‘excuses such as experimental setups and anything else cannot be used’ like last season. What’s the excuse for Russell being behind this year? Go on let’s hear it
It’s only a matter of time before you will use your last resort which I can hear it coming
@@valkenburgert I pay attention. That’s why I’ve got a job and don’t beg it 24/7 and just comment my whole life like an armchair expert thinking they know more than everyone else.
Your status must be ‘unemployed but a UA-cam armchair expert’ because you’re doing a very good job with that
Who are you to say that a ‘7 time champ’ is ‘below par’ 😂😂🤣🤣🤣that got me honestly.
Schumacher was schooled by rosberg 3 times yet there’s always excuses for him.
Max was beaten by ricciarso yet there’s excuses for him.
Max fans just use the ‘car’ excuse when it can also be applied to their ‘goat’. Your driver has always had weak teammates throughout his career. It’s easy to have so much confidence and be ahead with weak teammates always alongside you to make you look better than you actually are.
I can see the point, I started with karts in the mid 90s when sims just weren’t available and going from that to sims is more difficult than growing up with with sims and then going into real cars - I think you pick up things that translate better in that direction whereas you lose senses going for reality to sim
I am just surprised that F1 teams don’t use sims placed on top of a centrifuge. You can definitely simulate all the Gs with a hydraulic sim that rotates on the top of a centrifuge arm.
But Lewis imo has transcended f1 and it is just doing it for 2 reasons getting number 8 or doing it for fun he did it in the early years also Max is of the younger gen but has traditions of the older gen reasons why he doesn't like what f1 is doing atm
I'm a Max fan before you jump up n down chucking a tantrum but I still respect Lewis some what
He might need to get back into it. He hasn’t won a race in two years 😂
What is still missing in a simulator are the g-forces.
I am playing racing games my whole life, got a wheel at some point and it's an absolute improvement. Forced Feedback wheel again is another level. Than VR again is a level above...
It just feels different and gives you more feedback and feeling for distances, depth and what the car is doing.
G-Forces are adding even more to this.
Like Schumacher used to say, the "butt" is what you are feeling the car with...
I love driving my real car even more than games, even though it is nowhere near as fast as a race car in a Sim game.
I think the sim is fine for the off season or when your can't get seat time. Or perhaps learning a new track or track layout.
He hardly ever drive a simulator, and he hardly ever wins any races now lmao Verstappen does both wonderfully