Strategy

Hamilton and Carlo Santi: Ferrari's Interim Engineer Goes Permanent Ahead of Austrian GP

Answer

Confirmed

Lewis Hamilton entered 2026 with Carlo Santi as a temporary stand-in race engineer at Ferrari, following Riccardo Adami's move to the Ferrari Driver Academy. What began as a short-term fix quickly became permanent after the pair built an immediate connection, a run of strong results, and Hamilton's first Ferrari victory in Barcelona.

From stop-gap to cornerstone

When Ferrari confirmed on 16 January 2026 that Riccardo Adami would leave his role on the pit wall, the team moved him into a position overseeing the Ferrari Driver Academy and its Testing of Previous Cars programme. ^[1] That announcement arrived just ten days before the opening pre-season test in Bahrain, leaving little time to find a replacement. ^[4] The solution Ferrari landed on was Carlo Santi, a long-serving Maranello engineer who had been working in a factory-based remote engineering capacity since 2019. ^[7]

Who is Carlo Santi?

Santi studied mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan, specialising in vehicle dynamics, and subsequently completed a scholarship project at the Fiat Research Centre in Turin before joining Ferrari's vehicle dynamics department. ^[4] He later joined the Formula 1 team as a model engineer on Ferrari's first driver-in-the-loop simulator. ^[4] In 2016 he became Kimi Raikkonen's performance engineer, and for 2018 he was promoted to the Finn's full race engineer. ^[7] Santi engineered Raikkonen to his 21st and final Formula 1 victory at the 2018 United States Grand Prix, joining his driver on the podium in Austin. ^[7] After Raikkonen's departure at the end of that season, Santi moved into the remote garage at Maranello, providing live strategy support to track-side performance engineers across race weekends. ^[4]

An interim role that refused to stay temporary

Hamilton himself acknowledged during pre-season testing that Santi's appointment was only meant to last "a few races" before another engineer took over. ^[4] The original plan involved Cedric Michel-Grosjean, who had departed McLaren after serving as Oscar Piastri's lead trackside performance engineer, stepping in once his gardening leave was resolved. ^[4] However, the pairing of Hamilton and Santi produced immediate on-track dividends. Hamilton collected his first Ferrari podium with third place in China, then backed it up with consecutive second-place finishes in Canada and Monaco. ^[7] At the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, Hamilton converted his first Ferrari front-row start into victory, marking the Scuderia's first win in nearly two years. ^[3]

"My Italian Bono"

Formula1.com reported that Hamilton has struck up "a strong working relationship" with Santi across the opening rounds of the season. ^[2] Hamilton drew a direct comparison between Santi and his longtime Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington, calling the Italian his "Italian Bono." ^[2] After Barcelona, Ferrari confirmed the partnership would continue, with a spokesperson telling BBC Sport: "Carlo and Lewis are working pretty well together and there's no plan to replace him." ^[6]

:::analysis The rapid consolidation of the Hamilton-Santi partnership illustrates how the interpersonal dimension of a driver-engineer relationship can outweigh structural planning. Ferrari had a clear succession blueprint involving Michel-Grosjean, yet the chemistry that formed over seven race weekends proved difficult to set aside. The contrast with Hamilton's 2025 season under Adami is stark in the results column: no podiums that year versus a win and multiple front-row appearances by the midpoint of 2026. Whether the partnership holds through the second half of the season, and into the Austrian GP specifically, will be a narrative thread worth tracking as championship pressure intensifies. :::

Into Austria

As the field arrives at the Red Bull Ring, Hamilton carries momentum and an unusually stable engineering structure for what began as a season of upheaval. The pairing of an experienced, calm engineer with a driver who has spoken openly about needing emotional support and clear feedback on the radio is, on current evidence, functioning exactly as Ferrari would have hoped. The Austrian GP will be the latest test of whether that cohesion translates across a circuit with very different mechanical demands to the streets of Monaco or the long straights of Montreal.