"Since I stopped, my performance has gone much, much better," says Lewis Hamilton of his decision to stop using Ferrari's simulator.

Ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix the seven-time world champion revealed that he had stopped using the simulator because he wasn't happy with the correlation.

That weekend he finished second, kickstarting a series of podium finishes that included an emotional win in Spain.

Speaking at Spa-Francorchamps today the Briton admitted that he is still avoiding the sim, and feels his performances have benefitted as a result.

Asked if he has used the sim at all since Canada, the answer was a resounding: "No!" When pushed on how much he feels this has contributed to a string of results that has seen him out-score all his rivals, he smiled and said: "Massively.

"I tried all last year with it," he continued, "but as I said, when I was at Mercedes for the first few years I didn't use it. As it continued to develop, there was a point where we didn't use it.

"I've been driving simulators since 1997 and they can be really powerful and really useful tools, but they can also mislead you. I found all last year particularly that was the case, and then in previous years when I was at Mercedes it was very similar, so that's why I didn't use it. Since I stopped, my performance has gone much, much better."

Asked his opinion on relying on simulator work, Max Verstappen said: "Well, you can look at it from two things. If you use it to try and set up the car and then it's not correlating, of course it's not ideal. But most of the time, I think it's just trying to always make it better because, of course, in F1 there are so many rule changes that you're constantly updating the product.

"I think that's just the main thing with the team," he continued. "You're always trying to update the product, or there are upgrades coming to the car, or future ideas that you want to test on the simulator.

"Sometimes, as a driver, you feel like it's not the most useful for yourself, but it's very useful for the team. That's why it's very important that the simulator is used a lot.

"Of course, some days are quite boring, but I know that it's part of the process and part of trying to make the team better, push ahead and improve the overall package of the car."

"It's a hard one because it really depends on the correlation of the car to the simulator," said Alex Albon. "I think the more you can trust the tyre model and the car physics, and the better correlated the team can get it, then you do trust it.

"But if you have doubts or question marks on it, it's very hard to do setup items in a simulator and then totally commit yourself to those changes on the track," he admitted. "For now, especially personally speaking, a lot of the work is done on deployments and how you drive around these regulations and maximise your efficiency. Otherwise, yeah, I do understand where Lewis comes from."

"At the moment for us we are doing a lot of work on the engine side of things," said Esteban Ocon, "and I think that's been really good. We have very good correlation between the engine on the real track and the engine on the simulator.

"We are struggling a bit more on the rest, on our side," he admitted, "but this is something that the team is working on. We do spend a lot of time with Ollie every week in the simulator, but more to get everything under control, to make sure that we have all the simulations done, the start, the practice start, whatever it can be.

"It's still useful, but maybe less than where it was last year or the years before, I would say, on the chassis side especially."