Not just Bono and Adami: who were all Hamilton’s track engineers in F1

Change at the pit wall The 2026 season opened immediately with some significant news for Lewis Hamilton: after a very difficult first year at Ferrari, the seven-time world champion will change track engineer. Riccardo Adami, who had been in that position for 10 years and had already worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz before starting the collaboration with the Briton, has now been moved in role by Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur and will take charge of the Ferrari Driver Academy and the TPC test team. While waiting to understand who will take his place as Hamilton’s ‘guardian angel’ on the pit wall in Maranello, it may be interesting to rediscover who all the track engineers were who accompanied the Briton during his long adventure in the Circus. Phil Prew (McLaren 2007-2009) Hamilton’s first race engineer when he arrived in F1 was Phil Prew, who now works at Red Bull as Technical Operations Director of the new power units created internally by the Milton Keynes team. Already in 2007 Prew was an experienced figure, having worked as Mika Hakkinen’s Performance Engineer during the Finn’s golden years, which culminated with the two world titles in the two-year period 1998-1999. In 2001 he was then promoted to race engineer first with David Coulthard and then with Juan Pablo Montoya and Pedro de la Rosa. His partnership with the very young Hamilton at the time of the arrival of the Stevenage talent in F1 therefore seemed logical to Ron Dennis. With Prew at his side, Hamilton came close to the World title on his debut and then won it in 2008, achieving 11 victories and 27 podiums in 52 GPs up to the end of 2009. The direct collaboration between the two ended at the end of their third season together, when Prew was promoted to supervisor of both track engineers. Andrew Latham (McLaren 2010-2012) Following Prew’s promotion, Hamilton was joined for the following three seasons by Andrew Latham, who was already at McLaren in the role of engineer for the test team. Thanks to a few too many errors on the part of Hamilton himself and above all a less than perfect reliability of the Woking single-seaters, this three-year period was less full of satisfactions than the previous one for Hamilton, who not surprisingly at the end of 2012 took the crucial – with hindsight – decision to leave McLaren to join Mercedes. Mark Temple (McLaren 2012) Hamilton’s last seven races in McLaren, from Singapore to Interlagos 2012, were followed from the wall by Mark Temple, who was the Englishman’s Performance Engineer and was promoted following Latham’s parental leave. It was therefore he who ‘led’ Hamilton from the pits in the 2012 Austin GP, ​​which was Lewis’ last victory as a McLaren driver. Peter Bonnington (Mercedes 2013-2024) The partnership par excellence. The most successful driver-track engineer duo in history. Any adjective seems superfluous to describe the duo formed by Lewis Hamilton and Peter Bonnington in Mercedes. ‘Bono’, as the British engineer is nicknamed, had replaced Mark Slade as race engineer to His Majesty Michael Schumacher since September 2011, accompanying the Kaiser until the end of his F1 career. With Hamilton’s arrival in the team, Bonnington was confirmed as race engineer of the #44. The understanding between the two blossomed immediately and became unstoppable with the advent of the hybrid era of F1. Thanks also to the technical supremacy of Mercedes, Hamilton won six World titles alongside Bono, establishing himself as the most successful ever in this sport. In 12 seasons Bonnington missed only two races, in both cases being replaced by George Russell’s current race engineer, Marcus Dudley. EngineersGPs playedGPs wonPodiumsTitles wonPhil Prew 5211271Andrew Latham519210Mark Temple711/Peter Bonnington244831516Marcus Dudley2*12/Riccardo Adami24000* substitute for Bonnington GP Mexico 2019 and GP Austria 2022 Riccardo Adami (Ferrari 2025) We come to the present day: with Hamilton’s historic transfer to Ferrari, the partnership with Bonnington breaks down. The #44 is joined by Riccardo Adami, a highly experienced engineer, at Ferrari since 2015, who had already worked at Maranello with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz. The results, however, are known: the problems from a communication point of view between the two appear evident immediately and do not improve as the GPs go by. For the first time in his career, Hamilton ended an entire season without ever reaching the podium and his first year in the Scuderia became a resounding flop. Now, with the change in the technical regulations and with a new track engineer yet to be announced, the wait is all to find out if 2026 will be the year of rebirth for the seven-time world champion.