Revealed: Lewis Hamilton’s likely new race engineer after Sebastian Vettel gives Ferrari blessing

Lewis Hamilton is poised to work with Sebastian Vettel’s former race engineer Riccardo Adami when he joins Ferrari from Mercedes at the start of the F1 2025 season.

The news comes after Hamilton ‘s current engineer Pete Bonnington was rewarded with a promotion at Mercedes on Wednesday.

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Hamilton announced in February that he will join Ferrari on a multi-year contract from F1 2025, ending his long and successful association with Mercedes.

The British driver has won six of his joint-record seven World Championships with Mercedes, as well as becoming the first man to surpass 100 grand prix wins and pole positions, since joining from McLaren at the beginning of 2013.

PlanetF1.com revealed in the days after Hamilton’s move to Ferrari was confirmed that close Mercedes colleagues like Bonnington were highly unlikely to follow him to Maranello due to a “no-poaching” clause in Hamilton’s contract.

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The arrangement is understood to forbid Hamilton from having any direct involvement in persuading Mercedes staff to join him at Ferrari in F1 2025.

Bonnington has been promoted to the role of head of race engineering at Mercedes with immediate effect, but is to remain as Hamilton’s race engineer for the second half of the F1 2024 season, which begins with this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

The Mercedes man is still expected to serve as race engineer to one of the team’s drivers for F1 2025, with reports on Wednesday claiming teenage sensation Andrea Kimi Antonelli will drive Hamilton’s car in opening practice at the upcoming Italian Grand Prix to allow him to establish a working relationship with Bonnington.

Antonelli, who turns 18 on Sunday, is increasingly likely to be confirmed as Hamilton’s successor after reports claimed Mercedes have abandoned their interest in signing reigning World Champion Max Verstappen from Red Bull for next season.

Hamilton will start work with a new race engineer at Ferrari in F1 2025, with Adami expected to be the voice in the seven-time World Champion’s ear.

Adami was Vettel’s race engineer throughout the German’s six-year stint at Ferrari between 2015 and 2020 and currently works with Carlos Sainz, the driver whom Hamilton will replace at the Scuderia next season.

Taking to Twitter earlier this year, the respected F1 reporter Giuliano Duchessa dropped a major hint that Adami will act as race engineer to Hamilton, who approached Vettel “some time ago” for an initial impression of Adami.

Hamilton’s F1 2025 team-mate Charles Leclerc, meanwhile, is expected to continue with Bryan Bozzi, who replaced long-serving race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros ahead of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in May.

Duchessa said: “I heard Lewis call [sic] Seb some time ago to ask about Riccardo Adami’s 2025 perspective. Obviously the feedback on the qualities was excellent.

“While LEC is very happy with Bryan Bozzi so, barring any oddities, we can expect continuity.”

The news of Hamilton’s change of race engineer comes as preparations for Ferrari’s F1 2025 car – dubbed ‘Project 677’ – are believed to be ramping up.

Multiple reports in the Italian media recently have claimed that Ferrari are planning to pursue a new design concept for next season, including a revised wheelbase and a switch to pullrod front suspension.

The move to a pullrod front suspension, currently used by the likes of Red Bull and McLaren, is believed to bring a significant aerodynamic benefit by improving airflow at the front of the car and specifically the complex underfloor, which generates a high proportion of the cars overall downforce under the current ground-effect regulations.

La Gazzetta dello Sport claimed earlier this week that plans for Project 677 are ‘already advanced’ with Ferrari set to fast-track some F1 2025 ideas to the current SF-24 chassis.

These will include ‘non-invasive’ changes to the internal kinematics of the suspension as Ferrari consider moving away from the design philosophy followed by former technical director Enrico Cardile, who recently announced that he will join Aston Martin in F1 2025.

Ferrari’s suspension choices under Cardile have been frequently questioned during the ground-effect era, with Scuderia and customer outfit Haas the only teams persevering with a pullrod rear suspension.

The other eight teams on the F1 2024 grid all compete with a pushrod layout at the rear.

Speaking to media including PlanetF1.com at the launch of the SF-24 car in February, Cardile insisted that Ferrari did not find any significant differences between having a pullrod or pushrod suspension at the rear.

He said: “In reality, our rear suspension is a bit different in terms of top and lower wishbone distribution compared to Red Bull, to mention one team.

“We recorded good aero results moving towards this direction and when moving from pullrod to pushrod.

“We didn’t measure a big advantage to justify some compromise in terms of weight or compliance, so from there we evolved our suspension, keeping the same layout.”

Cardile is expected to be succeeded as Ferrari technical director by Loic Serra, who could split responsibilities with Diego Tondi (head of aerodynamics) and Fabio Montecchi (chief project engineer) in a model reminiscent of McLaren’s technical structure.

Serra is believed to be a close ally of Hamilton, having shared the driver’s concerns over the divisive zero-pod concept developed by Mercedes under the leadership of former technical boss Mike Elliott.

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