Hamilton sim work justified by 'last few difficult races'

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes' string of recent defeats against by championship rival Red Bull Racing was behind his decision to put in the hours in the Brackley squad's simulator.

Hamilton has never hidden the fact that he's never been a fan of tiresome and often laborious simulator work, despite the latter's importance in terms of a car's development.

Teams often employ reserve or junior drivers to sift through hundreds of changes or settings to virtually test a new component or trial a specific set-up.

At Mercedes, that burdensome task is often entrusted to former F1 driver and Sky F1 consultant Anthony Davidson.

But in light of the German outfit's recent consecutive defeats at the hands of Red Bull and Max Verstappen, Hamilton felt the need to get involved with his team's active efforts to try and improve the form of its W12. And that meant a good many hours of sim work.

"Well, I can’t say that I’ve necessarily enjoyed the sim work," he admitted ahead of this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix.

"I think just really, you know, particularly after the last few difficult races we’ve had, I just went in to try and see if there's any way I could try and help the team just be better prepared.

"I think there's been a couple of good things from it, but not life changing. And so, I'll continue to work with [Mercedes simulator driver] Anthony [Davidson] still and we've got drivers on there that do a lot of work.

"I think just working on the processes of how we communicate with them on their programme so we're getting the right things tested.

"I think overall it's been positive."

• Read also: Hamilton knew Mercedes updates were coming

Hamilton heads into this weekend's second round of racing at the Red Bull Ring with an 18-point deficit to Verstappen in the Drivers' Championship.

But the seven-time world champion isn't overly concerned, for now, about his runner-up spot behind the Dutchman.

"Of course, it's a time we were all pushing as hard as we can," he said. "Of course, we'd love to have more pace.

"At the moment, to be able to really challenge not only just winning in qualifying, but in the race, obviously they're continuing to take steps forwards and I just I can't get tied up and get into that negative bubble of worrying.

"All I do right now is just try to put all the energy into making sure I'm best prepared, helping engineers be best prepared. Lots of great conversations.

"And this is a time when we just come together and we unite and we work as hard as we can to rectify whatever issues we have.

"That's what we do and that's why we're world champions and have confidence in the team that we can do that."

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