Ferrari’s call to change Hamilton’s race engineer was taken over the winter, not on a race weekend, but the context for it was a crisis all the same. The seven-time world champion had gone a full 2025 season at Maranello without a podium, in a partnership on the pit wall that Hamilton himself now says never fully clicked.

Riccardo Adami, who had guided Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz through their Ferrari years, was moved off Hamilton’s car ahead of 2026. Carlo Santi, a Ferrari veteran best known for engineering Kimi Räikkönen to his final Formula 1 victory at the 2018 United States Grand Prix, took the seat.

Hamilton has not disowned his first partner.

“Last year, Adami and I had a really good relationship, and he was a lovely guy.”

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His verdict on the new arrangement, given in a recent Formula 1 interview, was less diplomatic.

“The engineer set-up is a million times better than it was last year.”

Santi’s Räikkönen years

Santi, 52, was born in Verona and joined Ferrari after a mechanical engineering degree at Milan Polytechnic and a spell at FIAT’s research centre, according to Formula 1’s own profile. He rose through simulation and vehicle dynamics roles before taking on Räikkönen as race engineer in 2018, standing on the podium at Austin that October for the Finn’s last grand prix win.

He is not on Hamilton’s car for every round. Cedric Michel-Grosjean was signed as an alternate, and The Race reported earlier this summer that the Santi arrangement, at first treated as temporary, had settled into the default configuration.

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‘A bit of an OG’

The “Italian Bono” line refers to Peter Bonnington, the race engineer who spoke to Hamilton on the radio throughout his Mercedes years. Hamilton told The Race that Santi fits a similar mould.

“I do feel like Carlo is like my Italian Bono. I told Bono that the other day. In terms of, he’s a bit of an OG. He’s an older guy that’s been around the block. He’s very calm, you can hear on the radio.”

50 points behind Antonelli

Hamilton took his first Ferrari victory at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona in June and has since climbed to second in the drivers’ championship on 169 points, 50 behind Mercedes’ second-year driver Kimi Antonelli, according to the standings after the Hungarian Grand Prix. Twelve rounds remain when the season resumes at the Dutch Grand Prix on Sunday 23 August at Zandvoort.

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