Lewis Hamilton has identified his growing relationship with race engineer Carlo Santi as an important part of the much more positive picture surrounding his second season at Ferrari. After spending much of 2025 learning how to operate within a new team and adapting to a different working environment, the seven-time world champion believes he has now found an engineering partnership that gives him the calm, precision and understanding he needs to perform at his best.
The change forms part of the wider evolution behind Hamilton’s improved 2026 Ferrari campaign. Riccardo Adami moved into a new role within the Ferrari Driver Academy, with Carlo Santi subsequently taking over alongside Hamilton. Their relationship appears to have developed quickly, giving the British driver a level of confidence in the communication from the pit wall that he considers fundamental.
Lewis Hamilton sees Peter Bonnington qualities in Carlo Santi
Hamilton used his long-standing relationship with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes to explain how highly he already values Santi. The Briton explained that he and Bonnington developed an immediate understanding during their time together and indicated that Santi now gives him a similar feeling at Ferrari. Hamilton added that he had even recently discussed the comparison with Bonnington himself.
That is significant given how closely Hamilton and Bonnington worked throughout the most successful period of the driver’s Formula 1 career. For Hamilton, however, the comparison is not simply about familiarity. It centres on the characteristics he believes a race engineer needs when situations become intense and decisions must be made quickly.
Carlo Santi brings calm and experience to Hamilton’s Ferrari radio
Hamilton emphasised Santi’s extensive experience and particularly values the calm manner in which the engineer communicates over the radio. He suggested that Santi’s composure is immediately noticeable during race weekends, while their shared focus on small details has helped strengthen the working relationship.
For a Formula 1 driver, the connection with a race engineer extends far beyond radio messages during qualifying or a Grand Prix. The engineer becomes the central point through which feedback, set-up preferences and changing track conditions are communicated, making trust and clarity particularly important when the pressure increases.
Hamilton therefore regards the driver-engineer relationship as a fundamental part of performance. The development of that understanding has become another element of the changes surrounding the seven-time champion as Ferrari attempts to maximise what it can extract from both driver and car. Fans can follow the wider developments surrounding the Briton through the latest Lewis Hamilton Ferrari news.
Ferrari engineering structure evolves around Lewis Hamilton
The arrival of Santi has also formed part of the evolution of the engineering structure around Hamilton under team principal Frédéric Vasseur. Better communication between driver and engineer is helping Ferrari interpret the Briton’s requirements more effectively, while the relationship feeds into the broader process of refining the car around his feedback.
Hamilton nevertheless spoke positively about his previous collaboration with Riccardo Adami. He described Adami as an excellent person and acknowledged that the pair had enjoyed a strong relationship and worked reasonably well together during his first Ferrari season. At the same time, Hamilton stressed that completely understanding and satisfying the specific requirements of an individual driver is a process that takes time.
That distinction is important after Hamilton’s difficult adaptation during 2025. A driver changing teams must learn new procedures, terminology and engineering methods while the people around him also have to understand exactly how he communicates what he feels from the car. Ferrari’s wider effort to extract more performance through that feedback remains an important part of the team’s technical development work.
Hamilton believes Ferrari is building the right foundation
The growing trust between Hamilton and Santi is therefore about more than simply having a new voice on the radio. Hamilton’s confidence in his engineer is helping him recover the connection with the car that begins with simulator work and continues through every stage of a race weekend.
It also fits into the broader changes taking place inside Maranello, where Ferrari is attempting to use the experience and feedback of both Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to raise its overall level. Frédéric Vasseur has already highlighted how the Hamilton-Leclerc dynamic can contribute to Ferrari’s development, with both sides of the garage playing a role in pushing the team forward.
Hamilton accepts that the road back to the very top remains long and demanding. Yet after the difficulties of his first year in red, the seven-time world champion now appears far more comfortable with the structure being built around him. For the Briton, finding in Carlo Santi some of the qualities he valued so highly during his Mercedes years is another indication that Ferrari is moving in a direction that better allows him to concentrate on extracting performance from the car.
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