The mystery of Lewis Hamilton's 'new' Ferrari race engineer who still hasn't started after SEVEN months

As we may have expected, Lewis Hamilton's first 18 months at Ferrari has not been without drama.

One of the central pillars of that has been his race engineer. In particular this was the story of his first year of the team, which proved to be a poor one.

His first engineer was the experienced Riccardo Adami, who had performed the role with four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari as well as Hamilton's predecessor Carlos Sainz, and also Daniel Ricciardo during his Toro Rosso days.

The point is Adami knows his stuff but his one year with Hamilton was notable for the painful lack of chemistry and very awkward radio transmissions between the pair.

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Hamilton and the Adami failure

Often the seven-time world champion would be exasperated by the lack of info, odd team requests, or the time taken to make decisions during a race if you remember his 'make a cup of tea while you are at it' jibe at the 2025 Miami Grand Prix.

The point is by the end of 2025, with Hamilton's confidence at its lowest after going a whole season without a podium for the first time ever and being thrashed by Charles Leclerc in the sister Ferrari, change was inevitable.

Perhaps the only surprise about Adami being replaced ahead of the 2026 season was how long it took.

A decision that everyone could see coming seemed fitting in the days after the December season finale in Abu Dhabi, wasn't made until the middle of January.

This timing is important because it left Ferrari trying to find a replacement ahead of the 2026 car shakedown at the end of the month - little more than a fortnight away.

Cedric-Michel Grosjean primed to take over

It soon emerged that the replacement appeared to be in the form of Cedric-Michel Grosjean, a McLaren employee who had been with the team for eight years - none of them as a race engineer.

For the January shakedown and February test though, it would be Carlo Santi stepping in part-time to replace Adami. Santi too has race engineering experience with 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen.

Rumours over the incoming Grosjean ramped up further at the first race of the season at the Australian Grand Prix in March when he was spotted in the paddock wearing Ferrari attire

Around this time, it was thought he would take over from Santi for the Miami Grand Prix in May.

However, in the time between Australia and Miami, Hamilton was back on form with Santi as his race engineer, grabbing his first Ferrari podium in China. In June, this was followed by his first Ferrari grand prix win in Spain.

Santi stays on

Santi and Hamilton were gelling well, and had been since they first started working together in January.

Vasseur even hinted in March that Grosjean may not even become Hamilton's race engineer, saying: “It won’t happen for now. I am not saying it will never happen, because I think Grosjean is a good signing and could work well with Lewis, so he might take on that role.

"But currently, Carlo Santi is working closely with Lewis and it’s going very well. We will decide together, but there is no rush,”

We are now seven months on and the guy who looked like being Adami's replacement is nowhere in sight to be able to do that. Intriguingly, on Grosjean's own LinkedIn page, it is updated as having a career break from the very start of 2026 - he's not even listed at Ferrari!

This wasn't such an issue when Hamilton was performing well, especially in the first half of the season, but since the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the 41-year-old's relationship with the team has become a little strained.

Ferrari refused to back his call to have a code of conduct for team-mates after his clash with Charles Leclerc, and he was furious when he was outnumbered in a committee that forced him to start on soft tyres instead of intermediates in Malaysia - a move he thinks cost him a chance to win the race.

Santi out? Where's Grosjean?

But focus was put back on Santi at the most recent Singapore Grand Prix when Hamilton could be heard asking on the team radio for the times of his competitors and his race engineer not quite giving him the info he needed.

This led to Hamilton's regretful call to stay out under the virtual safety car, costing him a podium as he slid down to P6. This despite the team begging him to pit. It was a clear communications failure, and a major one at that.

The situation is we now seem to be back in the territory where Ferrari are being questioned on if they operating the right way with Hamilton. If there are issues with Santi, then why haven't Ferrari already done the switch with Grosjean?

It all seems a bit of a mess at Ferrari these days, so much so that you can almost imagine that day one of the 2027 season will see Adami back in as race engineer for Hamilton because the Grosjean signing is looking stranger and stranger by the day.

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Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

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