Ferrari ‘source’ rates chances of Peter Bonnington becoming Lewis Hamilton’s new race engineer

Follow us on Google Discover

Lewis Hamilton will have a new race engineer for his second season at Ferrari, the team confirmed on Friday evening. Riccardo Adami has been moved to a new role in the company.

Adami had previously won nearly 20 races alongside Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz but a series of tense radio exchanges, starting at the season opener in Australia, raised questions about his relationship with Hamilton.

The driver himself always denied that there was any problem, but Ferrari have nonetheless opted to make the change after Hamilton failed to score a single Grand Prix podium in his first season.

Before joining the Scuderia, Hamilton had worked with Peter Bonnington for 12 seasons at Mercedes. They were the most successful driver-engineer combination ever, winning six world championships.

Ferrari have ‘no chance’ of signing Peter Bonnington from Mercedes

There was some speculation that Bonnington could follow Hamilton to Ferrari in 2024, but instead he signed a new contract and received a promotion to head of race engineering.

Bonnington supported Hamilton’s replacement Kimi Antonelli, who showed his potential to become a future star of F1 by scoring three podiums in his rookie season.

Naturally, the reshuffle at Ferrari will reignite talk about Hamilton/Bonnington reunion. But a ‘source in Italy’, consulted by The Daily Mail, says there’s ‘no chance’ a move will happen.

It seems more likely that Ferrari will promote an internal candidate instead. This is what happened in 2024 when Bryan Bozzi replaced Xavi Marcos on Charles Leclerc’s side of the garage.

Martin Brundle has already explained why Lewis Hamilton needs Peter Bonnington

Sky Sports’ Craig Slater reported in 2024 that Hamilton was ‘extremely pleased’ that Mercedes promoted Bonnington, even though it ruled out a continuation of the partnership.

Indeed, there’s no indication that Hamilton has pushed for Ferrari to make the move, even though it would theoretically be helpful.

Martin Brundle says Hamilton needed Bonnington, and ‘one or two’ other allies from Mercedes, to ease the transition. He didn’t have enough of his own ‘people around him’.

When Michael Schumacher moved from Benetton to Ferrari in 1996, he convinced top engineers Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne to accompany him. That was crucial to the success of his rebuilding project at Maranello.