Why Pete Bonnington’s split with Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes commitment comes as no surprise

Pete Bonnington’s commitment to remain with Mercedes isn’t a surprising one and puts to bed any fairytale of continuing his partnership with Lewis Hamilton.

Earlier this week, PlanetF1.com was first to reveal Pete Bonnington – Lewis Hamilton’s long-time race engineer – has secured a promotion at Mercedes, confirming once and for all that his partnership with Lewis Hamilton will come to an end after 2024.

Lewis Hamilton and Pete Bonnington to part ways after 12 years

Bonnington has played a huge role in Hamilton’s successes over the years. The calm and measured British engineer has spent almost the entirety of his career at Brackley, having started off with Jordan in the mid-2000s, and learned fastidiously alongside Andrew Shovlin when the team was still operating at Honda.

Bonnington became performance engineer to Jenson Button at Brawn GP in 2009, helping to secure that title, remaining in that role for Michael Schumacher as Brawn GP transformed into Mercedes in 2010. In 2011, he became Schumacher’s race engineer before being appointed to Lewis Hamilton’s side of the garage when the 2008 F1 World Champion switched from McLaren after 2012.

From day one at Mercedes, Bonnington has been the reassuring presence that Hamilton can rely on, offering instructions, advice, congratulations and, occasionally, commiserations. He’s seen it all – the jubilations of title wins, the heart-crushing defeats of 2016 and ’21, and has been the ever-patient figure to keep his man on the straight and narrow when Hamilton does despair.

But that will all come to a definitive end after this season. With Hamilton having made the decision to part ways with Brackley to make the switch to Ferrari that most drivers dream of at some point in their career, the big question from the moment of that call was whether Bonnington would make the switch with him.

It’s not unusual for engineers and drivers, particularly as drivers age, to become a partnership from which a driver prefers not to turn away. And, as partnerships go, there are few as symbiotic and successful as Hamilton and ‘Bono’.

“I mean with Bono it has been the longest engineer partnership that I’ve experienced and it’s been amazing,” Hamilton said of Bonnington in 2021.

“But it’s [also] been tough. He’s had some real difficult times as well in his journey and we’ve been there, through it, together. These ups and downs bring us closer.

“Sometimes we get frustrated with each other. It’s like a marriage, I guess, but we work it out and we keep pushing.

“I think what’s at the core of it is that there’s love and there’s real friendship and loyalty, which is a real part why we’ve been so successful.”

In 2023, Hamilton said: “I love working with Bono; he’s like a brother to me, a brother from another mother.

“I think he’s probably one of the few people that can truly stand me, I would say, on the good and bad days – except for Roscoe [Hamilton’s dog] – and how calm he’s able to be throughout a race, and how he’s able to help guide and help me navigate through a race. I don’t think there’s many people that can do that.”

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Pete Bonnington commits his future to Mercedes with promotion

But, if Hamilton did have designs on keeping Bonnington with him, it hasn’t played out that way. First was the reveal from Mercedes’ Toto Wolff back in February that, just like himself, Bonnington had been surprised by Hamilton’s switch, querying “whether it was April the 1st already”.

At that point, Wolff explained there would be many discussions to be had to figure out what the future held for Bonnington – might Hamilton prove persuasive, or would Mercedes be particularly eager to hold onto a man with experience of working with three World Champions in 15 years?

From the off, it was clear a move to Ferrari wasn’t a likely one for Bonnington. Certainly not helped by Hamilton having an ‘anti-poaching’ clause in his contract which prevented him from approaching colleagues to try tempting them away, the chances of Hamilton holding onto Bonnington seemed to shrink by the month – particularly as it was reported by Italian journalist Giuliano Duchessa that Ricardo Adami had been vetted by Hamilton.

According to Duchessa, Hamilton approached Sebastian Vettel, who raced with Adami as his race engineer, to ask for his impression of him – Adami currently race engineers for Carlos Sainz, the car Hamilton will take over next season.

“I heard Lewis call [sic] Seb some time ago to ask about Riccardo Adami’s 2025 perspective,” Duchessa said.

“Obviously the feedback on the qualities was excellent.

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

But, with the possibility – however slim – of a switch to Ferrari lurking, Bonnington has leveraged the situation in his favour. Even if he never had any intention whatsoever of leaving Mercedes, why not make use of the speculation?

After all, even if a move to Ferrari to continue working with Hamilton was straightforward from a contract perspective, Bonnington would have been taking even greater a risk with his career than Hamilton is – particularly in a team known for high personnel turnover.

Integrating with a largely Italian workforce after going through personal life upheaval to uproot from the UK, with no promise of further upward mobility in the short-term or longer-term once Hamilton’s driving career does come to an end, what made more sense to Bonnington was strengthening the bond he has with the team he’s spent almost two decades with.

In retrospect, this likely explains the intense emotions displayed at the British Grand Prix as Hamilton claimed his ninth win at Silverstone to return to the top step for the first time since the end of 2021. Hamilton’s tears had Bonnington’s voice cracking as he revealed how much the win had meant to him and, given how long it had taken the duo to get back to the top, the knowledge that this would be among the last wins of a glorious 12 years was an indication of the upcoming split and the closing chapter in their careers.

Given Bonnington’s experience as a race engineer, he has now been rewarded in a similar fashion to how Red Bull chose to reward Gianpiero Lambiase in 2022. Rather than being a mere race engineer, Bonnington has been promoted to lead the department and, while his experience will continue to be utilised as a race engineer at the coalface in 2025 – Bonnington can now mould the direction for this department – replete with a nice pay bump, greater authority, and ever-growing experience that could lend itself very nicely to management in the future.

Staying on as a race engineer also could turn out to be hugely important next year, given the importance of his experience. If Mercedes does plump for the very inexperienced Kimi Antonelli, which appears more and more likely by the day, Bonnington’s calm, methodical patience and vast experience would be the perfect mentorship the young Italian could need.

If Antonelli does prove to be the ‘next Verstappen’, Bonnington could further cement his legacy as one of the sport’s greatest engineers if he can help turn him into the World Champion his potential suggests.

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