Ferrari still hasn’t assigned Lewis Hamilton a permanent race engineer for the new season. After a disappointing 2025, the partnership with Riccardo Adami emerged as one of the sore points. In mid-January it was announced the Italian would move into a different role. Reportedly, Ferrari has already identified a replacement at rival McLaren, but according to former driver Karun Chandhok Hamilton should have been given the opportunity much earlier to build a bond with a new engineer.
Lewis Hamilton took part on Tuesday in the closed shakedown in Barcelona. The seven-time world champion completed his first kilometres in the afternoon with the new SF-26, but did so without a permanent race engineer at his side. According to insiders, Hamilton was temporarily supported in Spain by Carlo Santi, who previously served as Kimi Räikkönen’s right-hand. The team is said to have McLaren’s Cedric Michel-Grosjean in mind as the eventual race engineer, but that appointment has not yet been confirmed.
‘Hamilton still needs to build a rapport’
According to Karun Chandhok, Ferrari has been conspicuously slow to name a successor to Adami. “What really sets off alarm bells for me is the situation around his (Hamilton, ed.) race engineer,” he said on a broadcast of Sky Sports. “They haven’t given him the chance to build a proper relationship over the winter. I would have loved to see him in the simulator with his new race engineer. They could also have scheduled TPC days. You do that with an older-generation car, but at least that way you can start to build a trusting bond.”
“Such a person also needs to be fully integrated within the technical staff of the race team,” Chandhok continued. “Even when the conversation isn’t directly about the driver, he or she must be able to operate. Most people only see the interaction between the driver and his race engineer, but that’s only a small part of the work going on within the engineering team. Honestly, it surprises me that we’re already into testing and Hamilton still has to begin building that relationship. And that after such a poor season.”
