Ferrari had a five-week break to try and build on what had been a positive start to the season, with the team having claimed podiums in each of the first three grands prix of the season.
But they only took 22 points from Miami, their lowest total at a grand prix weekend of the season despite there being more points available at the sprint race weekend.
Now, Hamilton has slammed the simulator that he uses back in Maranello, claiming that the work that he did on that during the five-week break was irrelevant once the car actually got out onto the track on Friday.
“I’m going to have a different approach in the next race because the way we’re preparing at the moment is not helping and so we’ll see how that goes for the next race,” Hamilton told media in Miami. “But we’re going to another track with long straights. We’re losing three to four tenths just on straight line speed. So that’s there, and it’s going to be there until we fix it.”
Talking about his simulator work, Hamilton continued: “Ultimately, it’s always correlation. We go on it and then we get to a track and it’s always different when we get to a track. What I mean by it is that I spend time on the simulator. I don’t like simulators in general, but I sat in the simulator every week in 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 set up doesn’t work.”
Hamilton searching for first Ferrari grand prix win
There was real hope at Ferrari that their multitude of upgrades would turn them into championship challengers.
But, as a result of other teams’ improvements, Ferrari have actually appeared to have gone backwards, no longer the outright second-fastest team on the grid.
McLaren and Red Bull – mainly Max Verstappen – were providing a real challenge to Ferrari throughout the weekend, while Mercedes remain the outfit to beat.
It means that the illusive first grand prix win in Ferrari red feels further away from Hamilton now than it did at the start of the year, and he will need to be outperforming team-mate Charles Leclerc consistently if he has any chance of getting in the mix for race wins.
Back to the drawing board for Ferrari and, it seems, Hamilton.
