There is no shortage of people in this life ready to tell you what the problem is. Very few, by comparison, are willing to volunteer a solution.

It is a problem of this age in many respects and it is a trap Ferrari appears to have fallen into with Lewis Hamilton ahead of the F1 2026 season.

Lewis Hamilton set to share Charles Leclerc race engineer for Barcelona test

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It took until last Friday, exactly a week before the launch of its new car, for Ferrari to acknowledge what most of us had sussed as long ago as last spring: that Hamilton and his race engineer, Riccardo Adami, were horribly suited to each other.

That the relationship between the pair had started so jarringly in 2025 that it had quickly become unsalvageable.

The smart thing to do would have been to abandon it at the first opportunity – over the summer break perhaps – when it became obvious that this relationship wasn’t working and, more to the point, wasn’t ever going to work.

That’s what other teams would have done.

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And, yes, what Ferrari itself did back when it still operated like a logical, well-organised racing team (recall, for instance, how Rob Smedley was parachuted in to help a struggling Felipe Massa halfway through 2006).

In economics they call it prospect theory: when faced with a risky choice leading to gains, agents are risk averse, preferring a certain outcome despite its lower overall ceiling.

And so by sitting on its hands with the old problem, Ferrari has created a new one.

The moving of Adami to a new role within the team solves one issue. But what comes next? A different issue entirely.

Ferrari was unable to confirm to PlanetF1.com last week whether Hamilton’s new race engineer for 2026 will be an internal promotion or a new hire from another team.

With no decision expected in the short term, multiple reports in Italy have claimed that Charles Leclerc’s race engineer, Bryan Bozzi, will also oversee Hamilton at next week’s first pre-season test in Barcelona.

Ferrari declined to comment when approached by PlanetF1.com on Wednesday.

To say this approach, if true, may not be ideal for the preparations of Ferrari and its drivers is to provide an early candidate for the understatement of the year.

Even with the teams limited to a single car during testing, it is fanciful to think that Bozzi’s expanded role for the Barcelona test will not impact Leclerc in some way.

Imagine the scenario, for instance, of Leclerc carrying out Ferrari’s running in the morning session before handing over the SF-26 to Hamilton for the afternoon.

What is Charles to do during his afternoon debrief when his race engineer – his closest confidante in the Ferrari garage – is still stuck on the pit wall being shouted at for reminding Lewis to put charge mode on?

Spare a thought for Bozzi, too, who will likely not have a moment’s rest until Hamilton’s new race engineer is appointed.

Yet the biggest loser in all this, of course, is Hamilton himself.

The expanded test calendar for this season – a total of nine days of running over three separate tests, up from a single test comprising three days in 2025 – offered the chance for a better run up to this season, slowly dipping the toes into the waters of 2026 as opposed to being plunged in at the deep end.

Every lap he completes in Barcelona without his new race engineer will be an opportunity lost to develop that relationship and sidestep the moments of miscommunication – from the small to the significant – that ultimately defined his dreadful first season as a Ferrari driver.

At 41, and perhaps entering the final season of his career, it is possibly too late for Hamilton to establish with any other race engineer the kind of symbiotic bond he enjoyed for so many years with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes.

Those kind of relationships – the ones in which you instantly know what the other guy is thinking just by catching his eye – only come with years upon years of shared experience and success.

Short of Fred Vasseur dragging Bono by his ear from Mercedes to Maranello, it was too much to ask for Ferrari to give him that for 2026.

Not too much to ask, though, is to get the new guy in place for the first test.

Ferrari’s poor planning has set Hamilton up for a fall.

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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