Lewis Hamilton says he has found his “Italian Bono” at Ferrari in new race engineer Carlo Santi.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Ferrari veteran Santi stepped up on an initial temporary basis to be Hamilton’s race engineer for 2026 as Riccardo Adami was reassigned elsewhere within the team after a difficult first season for Hamilton, in which he failed to score a grand prix podium for the team.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Adami had worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz, but he could not re-capture the relationship Hamilton enjoyed with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes, with whom he won 83 of his 84 Mercedes races – Bonnington having missed the 2019 Mexican Grand Prix – and all six of his world titles at Brackley.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It is the most successful driver-engineer relationship of all-time.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
After Adami was removed ahead of 2026, Hamilton was assigned to work with Santi – who was Kimi Raikkonen’s former race engineer, and worked with the Finn when he claimed his final grand prix victory in 2018 in the United States – sharing the podium with Hamilton, who finished third.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his work with Santi, Hamilton described the Italian as an “OG” and as his “Italian Bono.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Last year, Adami and I had a really good relationship, and he was a lovely guy,” Hamilton told media, including RacingNews365.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“We worked actually relatively well together. I think catering to a driver’s needs, it takes time to learn when you’re giving an engineer feedback: their understanding of through-corner balance, their understanding of all the elements that contribute to the struggles; you try to describe what it is, the problem you have, corner by corner, entry, middle, and exit.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“You dissect it into five sections, if you want, and having that driver engineer, sometimes it is hit and miss.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“With Bono, it was hit off from the beginning. Mostly, he had a good working relationship with Michael [Schumacher], and I do feel like Carlos is like my Italian Bono.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I told Bono that the other day, and [Santi] is a bit of an OG; he feels like he’s an older guy who’s been all around the block and is very calm.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“You can hear on the radio, but this is the detail that we’re able to go into together with our understanding of the engineering side.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton says he has found his “Italian Bono” at Ferrari in new race engineer Carlo Santi.\u00a0 Ferrari…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-860522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}