After the sensational announcement of his move to Ferrari from 2025, Lewis Hamilton is considering bringing Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington and Andrew Shovlin with him to Maranello. However, they seem to be unenthusiastic about the move to Italy.
2024 has just begun, but at least in Formula 1, after the announcement of Lewis Hamilton’s arrival at Ferrari, it already seems to be a transition year towards 2025, the year when the seven-time world champion will hang up his Mercedes racing suit to don the red one.
The 11 months leading up to Lewis’s first day in Maranello, however, will not be spent sitting at home staring at the rain, as you can kill time (just to quote a famous image depicted in one of Pink Floyd’s masterpieces, who are British champions in the music field).
Lewis Hamilton will face his last season at Mercedes this year, with the W15 set to be unveiled on Valentine’s Day. But 2025 is just around the corner, and the Anglo-Caribbean has a very specific plan: to bring people with whom he has built his great saga in Brackley to Maranello, creating a familiar environment from the start, people with whom he can immediately understand each other and thus speed up the adaptation process by conveying his needs and preferences to the Scuderia immediately. Because, after all, even though he has signed a multi-year contract (talk of a 2+1), the time to try to win the eighth title is limited. And Lewis is well aware of this.
That’s why the British driver’s intention is to bring two key figures of the Mercedes era with him to Maranello. We are talking about Peter Bonnington, better known as ‘Bono’ in their famous team radio communications, and Andrew Shovlin.
Bono has been Lewis’s race engineer for years. Their relationship is very close, and the chemistry is palpable. Andrew Shovlin, on the other hand, is the Director of Trackside Engineering at Mercedes, often participating in team debriefs with the press and explaining what went well and what didn’t over race weekends.
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In recent hours, there has also been talk of the involvement of Riccardo Musconi, the current Head of Trackside Performance at Mercedes and a former race engineer for both Lewis and Valtteri Bottas when the Finn raced for the Brackley-based team, but these rumors have not been confirmed.
Hamilton’s requests or intentions make perfect sense. They would replicate what Schumacher did when he joined Ferrari in 1996. He brought along Ross Brawn, Technical Director, and Rory Byrne, designer, both key figures in the titles won in the previous two years with Benetton.
As of now, in early February, known for hosting the presentations of the new Formula 1 cars, there are several obstacles to Hamilton’s plans. The highest and most difficult to overcome is the uncertainty inherent in Pete Bonnington and Andrew Shovlin about moving from England to Italy. After all, it wouldn’t just be changing teams but also changing countries, adapting to speak Italian – at least outside the Ferrari Racing Division – and modifying the lifestyle of two families.
To convince the two to move to Maranello, there is time, but it is not certain that this will be the decisive factor for change. Meanwhile, Lewis prepares to wear the suit with the Mercedes logo prominently displayed on his chest and will try – still paraphrasing Pink Floyd – not to look back and realize that time has passed, having missed the right moment to act.
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