Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari race engineer still a mystery: Concerns grow ahead of Bahrain F1 test. With Bahrain testing just days away, Ferrari has yet to announce Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer replacement.

With the second F1 test session just days away, this time in Bahrain instead of Barcelona, Ferrari has still not announced Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer. This follows the recent announcement of Riccardo Adami’s role change within the Maranello team. During the Barcelona tests, Bryan Bozzi, Charles Leclerc’s race engineer, temporarily stepped in to cover Adami’s position. Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok has voiced some concerns over Ferrari’s delay in making this key decision.

A challenging start

Lewis Hamilton’s second season with Ferrari could already be starting on a difficult note. According to Karun Chandhok, in an interview with talkSport, Ferrari’s decision to postpone the selection of Hamilton’s new race engineer is somewhat questionable. Karun Chandhok commented: “I honestly find it a bit strange. Why didn’t they make that decision in December? The relationship between a driver and their race engineer is so crucial for success.”

The absence of a permanent race engineer during the Barcelona tests, Karun Chandhok believes, prevented the Briton from building the necessary rapport between driver and garage. This is a relationship that develops over time, as Hamilton experienced with his long-standing engineer Peter Bonnington.

Chandhok even drew a comparison with tennis: “If you think about a tennis player and their coach, they need to work together in sync 24 hours a day.”

As of now, there is still no official confirmation regarding who will take over Riccardo Adami’s role or when the announcement will be made.

The ongoing uncertainty surrounding Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer highlights a potential friction point in his integration into the Ferrari ecosystem for the 2026 season. As Karun Chandhok points out, the delay in appointing a successor to Riccardo Adami misses a vital window for building the “tennis-coach” level of synchronization that defines championship-winning partnerships. Ultimately, whether this delay is a strategic move or a logistical oversight, it adds an extra layer of pressure on Hamilton as he heads to Bahrain, where he will need to establish a working language and trust with his team in record time before the lights go out in Melbourne.