Lewis Hamilton admits missing link at Ferrari will hurt his 2026 season

Lewis Hamilton made the surprising admission that he will not have a permanent F1 race engineer in the first few races of the 2026 season.

Hamilton parted ways with race engineer Riccardo Adami in January, who was shuffled across to the Ferrari Driver Academy and Ferrari's Testing of Previous Cars programme.

A shakedown and the first day of Bahrain testing has already passed without any announcement from Ferrari as to who Hamilton's new race engineer will be.

In the interim, it has been confirmed Kimi Raikkonen's ex engineer Carlo Santi will be Hamilton's race engineer for the first week in Bahrain and the first few races of the season.

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Speaking to the media after his morning in the SF-26, Hamilton said: "It’s actually quite a difficult period, because it’s not long-term, the solution that we currently have.

"It’s only going to be a few races [that Santi will act as an interim race engineer]. Early on into the season, it’s going to be switching up again, and I’m going to have to learn from someone and work with someone new.

"So that’s detrimental to a season where you want to arrive with people that have done multiple seasons — that have been through thick and thin, and calm.

"But it is the situation that I’m faced with. I’ll try to do the best I can. The team is trying to do the best they can to make it as seamless as possible."

During the Barcelona shakedown, reports claimed that lead trackside performance engineer at McLaren, Cedric Michel-Grosjean was 'Ferrari bound'.

Reports also suggested he was set to become Hamilton's new race engineer, although this has not been confirmed by Ferrari.

According to Michel-Grosjean's LinkedIn, the engineer left McLaren in 2025 and at the top of his experience it currently reads 'Relocation: Career Break' from January 2026.

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