This past weekend’s Barcelona Grand Prix marked Lewis Hamilton’s first GP win since 2024. After debuting with Ferrari, Hamilton experienced his worst-ever season in Formula 1. Since then, Hamilton has built a new team around him at Ferrari, and his performance has improved significantly. This includes a new race engineer in Carlo Santi, replacing Ricciardo Adami, who worked with Hamilton in the 2025 season to disappointing results.

Who is Hamilton’s new race engineer, and why has this relationship been so critical in his climb back to the top?

Who is Carlo Santi?

Not too much is known about Carlo Santi. He previously spent the 2018 season as Kimi Raikkonen’s race engineer. Before that, Santi and Raikkonen worked closely together at Ferrari in 2016 and 2017. In 2019, Santi moved into a leadership role, working in Ferrari’s “remote garage” providing support from Maranello during Grand Prix weekends, and focusing on long-term performance development.

Earlier this year, Santi stepped up as Hamilton’s interim race engineer. This was intended to be a temporary role, but their recent success together could lead to a permanent partnership.

Why the driver-engineer relationship matters

The 2025 season was the perfect example of how much can go wrong when a driver and their engineer are not in sync. Lewis Hamilton and Riccardo Adami struggled with communication throughout their partnership. This was blatant in numerous radio exchanges and did not improve. A driver heavily relies on their engineer to provide insight, from strategy to competitors and everything in between. An ongoing communication disconnect between a driver and their engineer is extremely difficult to overcome.

For much of last year, it felt like Hamilton was just along for the ride, but this year has been drastically different. Hamilton has cemented himself as an integral contributor in setting the team’s strategy. Hamilton is one of the most experienced drivers on the grid, and being a passive participant is the exact opposite of how he wants to close out his career.

What makes Santi the right fit for Hamilton?

Lewis Hamilton has hit it off so well with Carlo Santi that he’s started referring to him as his ‘Italian Bono,’ alluding to his long-time Mercedes engineer Peter Bonnington. After his win in Barcelona, Hamilton had this to say about their partnership:

“I think catering to a driver’s needs takes time to learn. When you’re giving an engineer feedback, they’re understanding through-corner balance. They’re understanding all the elements that contribute to the struggles that you’ve got…

“I chose a different set-up this weekend, just ciphering through the data, working really well with my engineer – he’s absolutely awesome and I’m really loving working with him.”

With this statement, Hamilton has made it clear that he wants the relationship with his engineer to be a true 50/50 partnership. It’s this equal partnership that set Hamilton up for success this weekend.

Hamilton’s confidence in this partnership further shows in the tyre strategy Ferrari took in Barcelona. Hamilton adopted a three-stop strategy, starting on soft tyres, then switching to hards. Hamilton’s victory was cemented when a retirement from Fernando Alonso led him to pit under Virtual Safety Car.

The boldness of this strategy suggests Hamilton and Santi are not interested in playing it safe. With a car, a team, and a race engineer he’s confident in, Hamilton is in a position to set race-winning strategy, instead of trying to just stay alive.

This changes everything

Lewis Hamilton in a fast car and with a race engineer he trusts is a dangerous combination for the rest of the grid. He now presents a true threat to the Drivers’ Championship, a threat which will only intensify as Hamilton and Carlo Santi continue to grow together.