PF1 verdict: Our reaction to Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton race engineer bombshell

Ferrari announced on Friday that Lewis Hamilton will get a new race engineer for the F1 2026 season with Riccardo Adami moving to a new role.

Is it the right decision? And where does it leave Hamilton ahead of his second full season with the Scuderia? Our writers have their say…

Ferrari right to call time on tense Lewis Hamilton, Adami partnership

By Michelle Foster

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Questions were asked about Hamilton’s seemingly testy relationship with Adami early in the F1 2025 season as their radio communications made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

From calling out Adami and Ferrari’s pitwall for taking a “tea break” in Miami, where he ill-temperedly asked the Italian, “You want me to let him [Carlos Sainz] pass as well?” to being met with radio silence in Monaco, the scrutiny over the relationship continued throughout a campaign that concluded without a single grand prix podium.

Even their final radio exchange in Abu Dhabi wasn’t without niggle…

Hamilton: “Long season, guys. Thank you for your kindness, I’m grateful for all the hard work. I’ll always fight for you guys, always. That’s it.”

With no reply from Adami, Hamilton: “Did you get that message? The one time you don’t reply.”

Adami: “Yeah we got it. Sorry we were talking. Thank you very much, it was awesome working with you. Grazie mille.”

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It pretty much summed up their 24 races together, 24 races in which it didn’t appear as if Hamilton and Adami were going to gel in a driver/race engineer partnership.

And now Adami is gone, at least from that role.

Although one could argue that 24 races isn’t enough to build the mental bond between driver and race engineer such as Hamilton had with Pete Bonnington at Mercedes or Max Verstappen has with GianPiero Lambiase at Red Bull, the seemingly – from the outside and in the radio messages broadcast by FOM – that the situation was not improving.

But ahead of Formula 1’s all-important reset, and potentially Hamilton’s final season in the sport with an eighth world title on the line, Ferrari has made the right call separating the two.

Timing is fast running out for the Briton to surge ahead of Michael Schumacher as the sport’s greatest ever but he needs a voice in his ear who he trusts, who understands him, and who he will also listen to.

Now if only Ferrari could persuade Bono over…

F1 2026 is crunch time for Lewis Hamilton

By Thomas Maher

There are a few interesting details in Ferrari’s confirmation of the moving aside of Adami.

Not only is Hamilton not referred to directly, but instead is referenced as ‘car number 44’, but it appears a successor for the role hasn’t yet been decided upon.

Given the way the 2025 season ended under a cloud for Hamilton, it’s perhaps not surprising that it’s Adami who has fallen on his sword.

While Adami may have had success with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz in the past, these professional dynamics weren’t always smooth sailing, and, for whatever reason, the synergy between Hamilton and Adami never seemed to be quite there.

Given Hamilton was coming off the back of a 12-year professional marriage to Pete Bonnington, the fact that things didn’t immediately go smoothly with Adami is hardly unsurprising, but the seven-time F1 world champion now has to start that side of his Ferrari journey over again.

Whether it was a decision made by him or for him hasn’t yet been clarified, but you’d have to imagine the pair haven’t been split up without any input from Hamilton himself – if Adami was that important for Hamilton’s progress, he surely could have intervened.

It’s crunch time for Hamilton.

With the cars moving away from the ground-effect regulations he openly disliked, there is now yet another caveat in that he ‘has to adjust to a new race engineer’, and Ferrari has moved aside a long-tenured and loyal servant of the Scuderia to try making things even more comfortable for him.

Given the uneasy disquiet at the end of the first year together, what does Ferrari do if the change makes absolutely zero difference to Hamilton’s competitiveness or speed relative to Charles Leclerc?

Hamilton has been open about his own driving not reaching his high standards, and, coupled with areas he has felt needed improving at Ferrari (even if John Elkann thinks otherwise), there’s only so much the Scuderia can do.

At what point does the pattern of mediocrity that Hamilton has been locked into for several years, across two front-running teams, move from being a slump in form for one of F1’s greats, and become the reality that this is now his level?

2026 surely is that cut-off.

Driver and engineer have to ‘click’, it’s that simple

By Henry Valantine

So many drivers in years gone by have spoken about the importance of the relationship they have with their race engineer.

Max Verstappen, for example, joked a couple of years ago that his relationship with GianPiero Lambiase is so strong, that “GP has to do a few more years [in F1], then he can do something else”, and in 2023 said that, if he were to change his role, it would be “not ideal at all.”

Hamilton had that kind of unspoken bond himself with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes, but there are a couple of reasons why a reunion is unlikely at best.

As is de rigueur in Formula 1, Bonnington’s role is likely to come with gardening leave attached should he ever choose to depart, so Hamilton would still need a new engineer anyway.

And career-wise, ‘Bono’ also had his responsibilities extended with Mercedes to take on a more senior position, which is coupled with helping mentor Kimi Antonelli who, simply as a fact of age, likely has a longer career ahead of him.

Coming back to the main point, however, if driver and engineer do not ultimately ‘click’ together, this is not the first time in Formula 1 history where a change of role has followed for the engineer – whether at the behest of the driver or the team.

As for who comes in now?

Hamilton has spoken before of taking in plenty of time at Maranello to try and help the team forward, and if he is to strike the right relationship with a new engineer, he will likely be a part of the process because, ultimately, it’s up to him to make the most of these changes in 2026.

The best man for the job has already left Ferrari

By Oliver Harden

Hamilton is known to have heavily consulted Sebastian Vettel before he officially linked up with Ferrari last year.

Look closely enough and you can see Vettel’s influence in almost every move Hamilton has made since arriving at Maranello.

Take, for instance, the sight of him taking handwritten notes in between test runs in 2025.

Hamilton’s famous documents, meanwhile, are straight from the Vettel playbook, much in the same way that his attempts to help the team unlock its potential have been (mis?)interpreted by Ferrari’s management as interference.

Lewis also fell into the same trap as Seb by failing to take a trusted voice with him upon his move to Ferrari, someone to help him affect the change he needs from within as Michael Schumacher did to such great effect with Ross Brawn.

That – his failure to put his stamp on the team from the word go – is why he ultimately ended up working with a personality as fundamentally unsuited to him as Adami (although it should be said that Vettel and Carlos Sainz both managed to make Adami work for them with no trouble).

And now his performances in 2025 have raised more doubts over Hamilton’s own level, Ferrari is less likely to listen to him than ever.

The great irony of all this is that Ferrari already had the right man for the job when Hamilton walked through the doors at Maranello a year ago.

Jock Clear had a better understanding of both team and driver than most, having joined Ferrari in 2015 after working as Hamilton’s performance engineer at Mercedes in 2013/14.

Clear, strangely underused by the team for the last decade, stood as good a chance as anyone of unlocking the potential of Hamilton and Ferrari.

Instead, he was last seen giving interviews to gambling websites having left Ferrari in the second half of last year.

With Clear’s departure, perhaps, went Hamilton’s last hope of making a real success of his Ferrari career.

There’s the difference between being a Schumacher and becoming a Vettel.

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