Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton has a new long-term race engineer at Ferrari, according to reports.
Hamilton has had a good start to the 2026 season, picking up two grand prix podiums across the first five race weekends, and he sits up in fourth in the drivers’ championship, just three points behind team-mate Charles Leclerc.
That has followed a first season at Ferrari in 2025 that was dismal for Hamilton. The 41-year-old failed to claim a single grand prix podium in 2025, and finished 86 points behind Leclerc in the drivers’ championship.
Last season, Hamilton was working with Riccardo Adami as his race engineer, but the pair struggled to bond in the same way that Hamilton did at Mercedes with Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington.
Hamilton and Bono worked together for 12 highly successful seasons, during which Hamilton won six drivers’ championships.
But following his first season at Ferrari, it was announced that Adami would be stepping down from his position as Hamilton’s race engineer, and that Italian Carlo Santi would be taking over on an interim basis.
Now, Sky Sports F1 have reported that Santi is going to stay on long-term, and that there will be no other changes in the position as Hamilton has found his groove working alongside Santi.
Who is Carlo Santi?
Hamilton described Santi as his ‘Italian Bono’ ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix, and commended the experienced Ferrari man’s work.
Santi has a long history with the Maranello-based outfit, including a spell spent as another world champion’s race engineer.
Santi was the race engineer of 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen during his final year at Ferrari in 2018. Santi had been Raikkonen’s performance engineer for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, before getting promoted up to the race engineer spot to replace Dave Greenwood for 2018.
Santi then took a back step from his trackside duties after Raikkonen left, and began working away from Maranello in a ‘remote garage’.
Now, he looks set for a long spell as Hamilton’s race engineer, with the 41-year-old Brit constantly reiterating just how well he has been working with his new background crew since the turn of the year.
