Lewis Hamilton

Who is Carlo Santi? Lewis Hamilton's new Ferrari race engineer

Ferrari have switched the voice on Hamilton's team radio this year

Chris Deeley

Friday 6 March 2026 22:10

Ferrari F1 superstar Lewis Hamilton has a new race engineer...for the moment. It's time to meet Carlo Santi.

Santi is the man in the seven-time world champion's ear in Melbourne this weekend as the Australian Grand Prix kicks off the 2026 season.

But Hamilton and the team have confirmed that the appointment is just a stopgap before his long-term replacement for Riccardo Adami arrives.

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Santi isn't just a random engineer plucked from the ranks at Maranello though. He has a long history with the team, including time as a world champion's race engineer.

That world champion? Kimi Raikkonen, who you might remember from 'sounding like a bit of a nightmare to be on the radio with' fame.

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Who has Carlo Santi worked with?

Santi had been Raikkonen's performance engineer for the 2016 and 2017 seasons before getting promoted up to the race engineer spot to replace Dave Greenwood for 2018, the Finn's final year with the team before leaving for Alfa Romeo.

That 2018 season was by far the most successful of Raikkonen's second stint with the team, finishing on the podium 12 times in 21 races and collecting his only race win in that five-year stint.

When Charles Leclerc replaced Raikkonen the following year, Santi moved back to a role based out of the team's Maranello home, where he helped the team out from a ‘remote garage’ in the Italian base.

Fortunately, Santi described his role in the 'remote garage' in 2025, so we don't have to guess what that means. He said: “We can provide live support and even act as a back-up for the performance engineers at the track. This can be for routine matters or for critical ones that can arise during an event.

“As a general rule, in the remote garage we tend to focus on the medium to long-term activities that involve several departments, whereas at the track, the main focus is on strictly operational aspects.”

Who will replace Carlo Santi?

Lewis Hamilton confirmed earlier this year that Santi's appointment is only a temporary one, with Cedric Michel-Grosjean set to step in at some point soon.

Michel-Grosjean has served his gardening leave after departing McLaren, and is at the Australian Grand Prix this weekend in the Ferrari garage as he integrates into the setup.

"It’s only going to be a few races [that Santi will act as an interim race engineer]," Hamilton had said. "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."

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Lewis Hamilton Ferrari Australian Grand Prix