Lewis Hamilton is 'alone' at Ferrari after leaving vital ally behind

Former F1 star David Coulthard has said he is 'fascinated' by the fact Lewis Hamilton went to Ferrari as a lone wolf.

Hamilton moved to Ferrari in January 2025, following 12 highly successful seasons with Mercedes in which he won six drivers' championships and built up some valuable relationships.

But when the Brit opted to move to Ferrari, his race engineer Peter Bonnington did not follow him, instead staying with Mercedes and becoming Kimi Antonelli's race engineer.

This did prove to be an issue for Hamilton in 2025 as he struggled to gel with his new engineer Riccardo Adami.

Following some tense exchanges between the pair and disappointing results for Hamilton, Ferrari have opted to change it up for the 41-year-old in 2026, although a permanent race engineer is yet to be appointed in Adami's place.

On top of this, Hamilton's former manager Marc Hynes also left his side back in 2021 to instead focus on Hamilton's off-track projects and has now left completely to go to Cadillac, while Hamilton's Ferrari press officer Ella Yeboah is believed to have also left the team ahead of the upcoming season too.

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Can Hamilton bounce back in 2026?

In 2025, Hamilton finished 86 points behind team-mate Charles Leclerc, and failed to secure a grand prix podium while Leclerc claimed seven in the same car.

Hamilton will need to perform better in comparison to Leclerc if he is to challenge for an eighth world title, even if Ferrari do have the dominant car in 2026.

This year sees wholesale regulation changes sweeping into the sport, and there is real hope that Ferrari will be fast enough to challenge for more regular race victories in 2026.

On top of this, Hamilton is getting the chance to drive a completely new generation of car, and he recently revealed he is 'in a much better place' and enjoying racing around in the new Ferrari machine, but all of this could prove irrelevant if the British icon cannot settle down with his currently unconfirmed new race engineer.

Hamilton himself told media in Bahrain that the fact he might have to change engineers twice throughout the 2026 campaign could be 'detrimental' to his chances of a comeback, something Coulthard appears to agree with having laid out just how important the bond between a driver and their engineer is.

Speaking on an episode of the new Up to Speed podcast, Coulthard said: "I find it absolutely fascinating that Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes and walked into Ferrari alone.

"He didn't take anyone with him, and he may have brought Angela [Cullen] his physio back so he had let's say someone around him that was a touch point to make him feel comfortable, but every time I left a team, I took an engineer with me.

"They're your databank of knowledge. The relationship with your engineer is the most important relationship in the team because that's the person who fights your corner in terms of new parts coming into the team, that's the person that gives you all the information when you're out on track to define what your strategy is going to be because the strategist can tell you 'pit now', but if the driver doesn't come in, you're not pitting now.

"So it's so important, arguably more important than the relationship you have with your partner."

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