F1 News
Hamilton has 'job advert' for his Ferrari race engineer with set of demands
Lewis Hamilton will start a new chapter in his Formula 1 career next season when he leaves Mercedes to join Ferrari. The seven-time World Champion has a long-standing relationship with his engineer, Peter Bonnington, but 'Bono' will stay behind at Mercedes. Therefore, Hamilton needs to find a new race engineer, and he has a shopping list for that new person.
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. Instead, Hamilton is searching for a new voice on his team radio.
What does Hamilton want from his new race engineer?
"It's got to be someone you get on with, it's got to be someone that you are ultimately able to find it easy to build a relationship with and trust. It's going to be a discover process to find the next one. I’ll know early on whether it's going to work or not and I think it's just about communicating," Hamilton told GPblog and others in the paddock at Zandvoort.
But Hamilton still has ten Grands Prix weekends (and four months) with Mercedes. That makes planning for the 2025 season difficult, as his focus remains largely on the current task.
"It’s tough. It makes it pretty difficult but I think it's probably the same for anyone moving into a new office. It’s not until you go…it'll be very heavy loaded at the start of next year," Hamilton concluded.
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