Lewis Hamilton singles out unsung Ferrari hero who ‘reignited’ his love for driving

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Lewis Hamilton has explained the importance of new Ferrari race engineer Carlo Santi in his 2026 resurgence.

Santi joined Hamilton on the podium as he celebrated his first win for the team at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix on Sunday.

Hamilton worked with Riccardo Adami, Carlos Sainz’s former engineer, in his first season, but the pair never gelled. Team principal Fred Vasseur decided to make a change for 2026.

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Lewis Hamilton lifts the lid on his connection with Carlo Santi at Ferrari

The original plan was for Santi to carry out for the role for a few races and then hand over to Cedric Grosjean, who was acclimatising after joining from McLaren.

But Hamilton has decided to stick with Santi, having formed an immediate connection with the 52-year-old. He has even called him the ‘Italian Bono’, a reference to longtime Mercedes right-hand man Peter Bonnington, who stayed at Brackley to work with Kimi Antonelli.

Santi hadn’t been the lead race engineer since Kimi Raikkonen left at the end of the 2018 season, so Vasseur was taking a risk. But based on Hamilton’s warm tribute in the post-Barcelona press conference, it has clearly paid off.

“Yeah, it was great to have him up there,” he said. “I think him substituting this year, jumping in and diving in deep with me…. we didn’t know each other, we’d never spoken and I didn’t know anything about him.

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“We met and I think got on straight away. But it’s great to be able to connect with an engineer other than what I used to have.

“I had it for such a long time and then you lose that feeling because Bono’s now doing it with Kimi. It’s really great to be able to share that experience with him on that stage.

“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 for being an engineer, as he has done for me as a driver.”

Hamilton initially feared he would be at a disadvantage this year due to having an interim engineer, but Santi has instead been pivotal to his transformation.

The world feed coverage featured several messages of encouragement from Santi to Hamilton during Sunday’s 66-lap race, and that was exactly what he needed to offset the inherent nerves.