Car simulators are accurate enough that F1 drivers drive more in simulators than in practice laps. They are very accurate. More than well enough to train a model to drive, for example, reasonably fast. Of course the real world is always different even if simply because the conditions are different, so you keep some headroom.
I think this has more to do with cost and convenience more than being a better representation of what it's actually like driving on the extremely varied state of a track. You can see this with the practice laps being extremely important because of the way the tire compositions, weather and car set ups change the dynamic of the cars drastically. The simulators can't replicate this effectively.
