Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari race engineer has moved into a new role

Race engineer Lewis Hamilton has been moved from the 2025 Formula 1 season to a new role at Ferrari.

Riccardo Adami will take over as director of the Ferrari Driver Academy and their ex-car testing programme.

Ferrari’s statement did not mention Hamilton by name, saying only: “The appointment of the new race engineer for car No. 44 will be announced in due course.”

This move comes after continuous speculation throughout the 2025 season that there were communication problems between Hamilton and Adami.

Hamilton (41 years old) always denied that this was the case and insisted that their relationship was fine, despite the impression left by a number of their conversations on the team radio.

The relationship with the race engineer is one of the most important relationships for any driver.

The engineer is the person the driver talks to via the radio from the car, and together they decide to make changes to improve the car’s performance and sometimes the role is as much an advisor as a colleague.

Before joining Ferrari, Hamilton worked with one engineer at Mercedes – Peter Bonnington – throughout his 12 years at the team.

Hamilton, a seven-time champion, has had a difficult first season at Ferrari, and has spoken several times about the need for changes he believes are needed within the organization, without specifying what they might be.

Ferrari’s statement added:[Adami’s] “Extensive track and Formula 1 experience contributes to the development of future talent and fosters a culture of performance across the programme.”

Testing of previous car programs has become important within Formula 1 as a way to give young drivers experience, with in-season testing in existing cars severely restricted.

Hamilton outperformed teammate Charles Leclerc during his first season at Ferrari.

The British driver finished one place, 84 points behind Leclerc in the championship, and lost to the Monaco driver 22 times compared to seven times in qualifying, by a difference of 0.15 seconds per lap. Leclerc’s average position on the grid was 5.6 while Hamilton’s average position was 9.5.

Hamilton was eliminated from the first round of qualifying for the final three races of the season.

In the last race of the year in Abu Dhabi, there was apparently an embarrassing dispute between Hamilton and Adami, when the Briton asked his engineer not to inform him who was ahead of him on the track.

After being told that the car in front of him was Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoletto, Hamilton responded: “Stop telling me I’m racing people. I know I’m racing him, man. Just let me do it. I’m racing everyone in front of me.”

Adami has previously worked with both Carlos Sainz and Sebastian Vettel, and his relationship with the German has been tense at times.

There were several times during the 2017-18 season, when Ferrari had a competitive car but let their title hopes die due to a series of mistakes, when Vettel lost patience with the team’s race operations.

Sainz also questioned the team’s strategic choices on a number of occasions during his four years at Ferrari.