Why Hamilton's race engineer bond shows F1 is a people's sport first

Lewis Hamilton provided the feel good hit of the summer by finally taking his first Ferrari grand prix win in Barcelona, which was the first step of a redemption arc following a bruising maiden campaign in 2025.

The high-level steps it took to get there have been well documented by now. Hamilton's input on the 2026 Formula 1 car and a raft of technical and personnel changes behind the scenes, including a move to different brake configuration which Charles Leclerc has also since switched to, have all combined to make the most out of an upgraded SF-26.

Praising car upgrades, engine performance or set-up changes always feels too abstract, though. Beneath all that, what has really turned Hamilton's career around is people. At the end of the day, thousands of human-hours go into any of those improvements across all 11 entrants, with frontline F1 teams employing over 1000 staff.

That's why it always feels a little unfair to single out individuals, but it's hard to overestimate the impact of Hamilton's new engineering team, led by race engineer Carlo Santi. Aged 52, Santi has been a Ferrari veteran for many years, heading up the team's remote engineering team from Maranello before being paired with Hamilton this year.

Santi was initially brought from the factory to the track as a stop-gap solution, and there may still be races where someone else is in Hamilton's ear depending on off-track commitments. But the pair got off to such a strong start that Hamilton is dead set on keeping Santi on a permanent basis, even dubbing him his “Italian Bono”.

Why Hamilton needed an "Italian Bono", and found him in Carlo Santi

Santi was on the podium when Hamilton celebrated his Barcelona GP win recently

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Praise doesn't get any higher than that. Hamilton's former Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington was integral to the Briton's success at the Silver Arrows, as he formed a unique partnership with the world champion to bring out the best in him. He is also now clearly meshing well with the team's new superstar Kimi Antonelli as well, despite the Italian being 22 years Hamilton's junior.

"Bono is a superstar," said Mercedes chief Toto Wolff, when asked about what made Bonnington such a good fit for two drivers from entirely different generations. "He is just the optimum combination of an engineer. Nerdy when he needs to be nerdy and to look at the science and the data, but also super compassionate when the driver needs support.

“He's patient, which is also a feature that when dealing with complicated brains of drivers is necessary. But he's also firm. He was firm with Lewis and he was firm with Kimi. For me he's the best in the business."

"I do feel like Carlo is like my Italian Bono. I told Bono that the other day. He's a bit of an OG. He's an older guy that's been around the block. He's very calm, you can hear it on the radio. There's the detail that we're able to go into together" Lewis Hamilton

The fact that Hamilton has now found a similar connection with Santi at Ferrari is no slight on his previous race engineer Riccardo Adami, an equally qualified veteran engineer. But the driver-race engineer connection is uniquely personal and subjective. Understanding what has to be said, and when to remain silent. Being calm on the team radio, while still conveying the right level of urgency.

"Adami and I had a really good relationship," Hamilton said. "I think catering to a driver's needs takes time to learn. When you're giving an engineer feedback, they're understanding all the elements that contribute to the struggles of driving. You try to describe what the problem is you have, corner by corner, entry, middle, exit. Having that driver-engineer collab, it's hit and miss sometimes.

"I do feel like Carlo is like my Italian Bono. I told Bono that the other day. He's a bit of an OG. He's an older guy that's been around the block. He's very calm, you can hear it on the radio. There's the detail that we're able to go into together. Our understanding of the engineering side, I think it's something that's worth looking at."

A good mix of EQ and IQ

The importance of the driver-race engineer relationship can never be understated

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Staying calm on the team radio and communicating in a concise manner in the heat of the moment sounds difficult enough, but that's before realising race engineers are being fed loads of information from the rest of the team, which they then have to parse and filter into what is actionable in the moment and what is relevant and urgent enough to communicate with their driver. That can only happen once a race engineer truly understands what makes a driver tick, and what ticks them off.

"If you talk about EQ and IQ. I think there needs to be a good mix of both," said Karel Loos, former race engineer to Daniel Ricciardo and Fernando Alonso, now head of trackside engineering at Alpine, in an Autosport interview a few years ago.

"You start to feel when they're in the right frame of mind and when they're not. That's quite important to them, maybe give them a little bit of motivation, or making sure that they're comfortable. And they know: 'Right, we can do well here and there's no reason to panic'. Having them in the right frame of mind, there's sometimes more lap time in that than a small set-up change."

Julien Simon-Chautemps, who engineered Kimi Raikkonen and Leclerc at Lotus and Sauber respectively, added: "For me a great engineer is a great communicator, because there's often a lot of stress. You need to make the right decisions and often some pivotal calls in a very short timespan.

"And the other point is resilience. You need to not let mistakes or poor results get you down. Just dust yourself off and focus on the next race. You need to be fairly stubborn as you are always looking for improvements to make the car better.

"Some drivers need more information on the radio, some need less, but it's part of your job to be able to read them, what they need and want, so you can get the best out of them. Sometimes that matches and sometimes it doesn't."

It is that magical match that Hamilton now appears to have replicated with Santi, with the Italian joining him on the Barcelona GP podium as the Briton claimed an emotional win.

A people sport first

F1 is the ultimate team game

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

That's all great when things go well, but when the team doesn't perform or makes mistakes, then it's those same individuals who become easy targets, whether it's team principal Fred Vasseur, the head of strategy or the race engineers, who have a public profile because their voices permeate through millions of living rooms every two weeks.

That's why not every key name in Hamilton's engineering team is widely known to the public, and why Vasseur also doesn't want to expose Santi to public scrutiny too much, especially at a high-profile squad like Ferrari that carries the hope of an entire nation, stoked by an intense Italian press. The Frenchman has also shrugged off any credit that is his due for making Hamilton more comfortable at Ferrari.

"I don't want to put Carlo in front or whatever, I think it's a huge effort from everybody," Vasseur said after Hamilton's Barcelona win. "Carlo is part of the process and the fit between Carlo and Lewis is good. But we have to react as a group in the good and the bad moments. When it's a bad moment, I'm trying to protect the team and to take the blame myself. I don't want to put a department or someone in front."

But other than protecting his team members, Vasseur has more reasons not to single out individuals. Hamilton won the Barcelona Grand Prix not because of him or because of Santi, but because of tens of thousands of decisions taken every day by over a thousand people in Maranello as they conceived, designed, produced, built and engineered his Ferrari SF-26, from the left front tyre changer in the pitlane to the quality assurance engineer at the factory.

It's that collective effort and human cost that often goes underreported when drivers or figureheads take the plaudits.

F1, and motor racing at large, is a people's sport first.

Hamilton will aim for that second Ferrari win in Austria this weekend

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