After the announcement of Riccardo Adami’s departure, speculation has officially begun over who will become Lewis Hamilton’s next race engineer at Ferrari.
Rumours in recent months had suggested that a split could be avoided. Instead, on the very day Ferrari fired up the engine it will use in its pursuit of the 2026 Formula 1 world championship, the Scuderia confirmed Riccardo Adami’s new role, effective from the coming weeks. As a result, the Italian engineer will no longer be working trackside alongside Lewis Hamilton, who on several occasions had highlighted their “incompatibility”.
But who will replace Riccardo Adami on the pit wall?
The key question now is who will take over from “Riky” on the pit wall for car number 44. Ferrari has stated that the decision will be announced in the coming days. Unsurprisingly, speculation started immediately, with fans continuing to hope and dream of a potential arrival of Peter Bonnington from Mercedes.
However, in reality, there appears to be no genuine chance of seeing Bono dressed in red. The British engineer has already featured in the seat-fitting video of Kimi Antonelli, and the Brackley-based team has confirmed that there will be no changes to the race engineers assigned to its two drivers.
So who could become Lewis Hamilton’s new right-hand man? Looking at Ferrari’s recent past, a possible internal candidate emerges. When Ferrari decided to part ways with Xavi Marcos, Bryan Bozzi was promoted after serving as Charles Leclerc’s performance engineer. On the other side of the garage, that role is now held by Luca Diella, who joined Ferrari from Mercedes last summer.
Luca Diella, who is considered one of the figures “wanted” by Lewis Hamilton, could therefore be the leading candidate to become the new race engineer for the British driver’s number 44, potentially starting from the Barcelona tests. For now, this remains only a hypothesis, and certainty will come only with Ferrari’s next official announcement.
The potential promotion of Luca Diella to the role of race engineer represents a strategic move to provide Lewis Hamilton with maximum technical familiarity ahead of the 2026 revolution. Having previously worked at Mercedes, Diella possesses the methodological synergy that Hamilton refined over a decade of success, offering an internal solution that mirrors the successful promotion of Bryan Bozzi for Charles Leclerc. While the “Bono” dream has officially faded, Ferrari appears intent on building a tailor-made structure around the seven-time champion, capable of immediately translating the potential of the new Power Unit into top-tier performance from the very first laps in Barcelona.
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