'Bono' to stay at Mercedes: This is Hamilton's response
F1 News
The news that shocked everyone at the start of the 2024 season was that Lewis Hamilton would leave Mercedes at the end of the season to join Ferrari. Questions were asked straight away whether Hamilton's long-time race engineer Peter 'Bono' Bonnington would depart Mercedes and move to Ferrari as well. However this was shut down after Mercedes confirmed Bonnginton's promotion to head of race engineering. This is how Hamilton responded!
'Would have loved to continue with Bono'
When asked during Thursday's media day ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton admitted that he would have loved it if Bonnington had moved across to Ferrari with him at the end of 2024. However, he told GPblog and others the reasons why Bonnington decided to stick with Mercedes.
"We have a great relationship and so you heard in the civil, he's like a brother. But I'm really, really, really happy for him. For me, I think it's just about people doing what's best to do whatever's best for you, packing up and leaving and I can only imagine it's not him and his partner and it affects. It impacts both of them. So they had to do whatever is right for him."
Hamilton continued to say "I knew it would be like an unlikely scenario that he would go with me because it's such a drastic change. I'm really happy, firstly, the team have acknowledged and made changes to this pathway within the team so you can grow more with it. I think you'll now be able to show them even more of the great things that he can do. But either way, we're going to be family forever."
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