New Lewis Hamilton F1 role filled as Ferrari confirm dream partnership

Lewis Hamilton smiling at the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix — Photo: © IMAGO

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New Lewis Hamilton role filled as Ferrari confirm dream partnership

Hamilton seems to have found the missing piece of the Ferrari F1 puzzle

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Thursday 25 June 2026 19:44

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Ferrari F1 team have confirmed that a major role alongside Lewis Hamilton has been filled, cementing a dream partnership for the seven-time champion.

The 41-year-old endured a fractured first year in red last season, with the move from Mercedes to the Scuderia not going as smoothly as he would have hoped.

It has to be said that one of the most painful parts of Hamilton's transition to the Italian F1 squad was the loss of his long-term Mercedes race engineer Peter (Bono) Bonnington.

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For 2025, Riccardo Adami was assigned as Hamilton's first new race engineer since 2013, but the pair were not a good match.

Despite Adami having previously held the role of race engineer for former stars of the Scuderia such as Carlos Sainz and Sebastian Vettel, he never managed to click with Hamilton.

The British F1 superstar often found himself on the receiving end of blunt responses, or sometimes no response at all when asking more of what should have been his closest ally following the team switch.

Hoping to turn over a new leaf in time for the new regulations in 2026, Ferrari removed Adami from the position as Hamilton hinted at the split when telling media he had spent the winter break: "removing things that don’t serve me or bring the right energy."

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Thankfully for the 106-time grand prix winner however, Ferrari have now confirmed they have no plans to replace Adami's temporary replacement, Carlo Santi.

The Scuderia put Santi up to the task of taking on the role of interim race engineer for the opening rounds of this year's campaign, but are clearly against interrupting what appears to be a much-improved relationship between Hamilton and his new engineer.

BBC F1 correspondent Andrew Benson provided an update on the full-time appointment of Hamilton's engineer ahead of this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix.

In a Q&A for BBC Sport , Benson confirmed: "Santi was initially meant to be a stop-gap before Hamilton received a new full-time engineer, but a Ferrari spokesperson says: "Carlo and Lewis are working pretty well together and there's no plan to replace him."

Ahead of Hamilton's highly-anticipated first grand prix victory in red at the Barcelona GP last time out, the former Mercedes star hailed Santi and even labelled him the 'Italian Bono'.

Carlo Santi will remain as Lewis Hamilton's race engineer at Ferrari

Santi joined Hamilton on the podium in Catalonia, with the Brit going on to praise his new ally after the race.

"It was great to have him up there," said Hamilton, reflecting on the landmark moment.

"I think, him kind of substituting this year, jumping in and diving in deep with me. We didn’t know each other, we’d never spoken...I didn’t know anything about him. And we met and I think got on straight away.

"It’s great to be able to connect with an engineer other than what I used to have. You know, I had it for such a long time and then you kind of lose that feeling because Bono’s now doing it with Kimi [Antonelli].

"It’s really great to be able to share that experience with him on that stage, and also probably, like, he’s very, very quiet. You could tell it’s hard for him to express his emotions. He’s just smiley and, you know, I’m giving him these big hugs and pulling him in, saying thank you.

"I like to think that this has probably reignited the love that he has as being an engineer as he has done for me as a driver."

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Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

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