You do hear about teams struggling with correlation issues, where their simulations just aren’t matching reality. They do use some of the limited practice time

You do hear about teams struggling with correlation issues, where their simulations just aren’t matching reality. They do use some of the limited practice time F1 teams are allowed to do things like run the car with aero rakes (lots of pitot tubes on scaffold like structures) attached or the covered in dayglo flow-vis paint to gather real world data.