Ferrari keeps Santi as Hamilton race engineer

Ferrari has decided to stick with Carlo Santi as Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 race engineer after the pair’s strong start to 2026, with the team confirming there are no plans to replace the man initially drafted in as a temporary solution.

A Ferrari spokesperson told BBC Sport: “Carlo and Lewis are working pretty well together and there's no plan to replace him.” That settles months of uncertainty around a role Ferrari had only intended Santi to fill on a stop-gap basis after Riccardo Adami moved to another position within the company.

Santi stepped into the job during pre-season testing and has remained Hamilton’s voice on the radio through the opening seven rounds of the season. The switch came after Ferrari split Hamilton from Adami following what had been described as a hugely disappointing and challenging debut campaign for the seven-time world champion in 2025.

The early return on that change was clear in Spain, where Hamilton took his first win as a Ferrari driver at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix and shared the podium moment with Santi. For Ferrari, that breakthrough only reinforced the view that the new pairing is working.

Hamilton made that clear himself after the race. Speaking after the Barcelona win, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari driver, said: “It was great to have him up there [on the podium].” He added that Santi had been “substituting this year, jumping in and diving in deep with me,” before saying: “We met and I think got on straight away.”

Hamilton said the relationship mattered because he was building a new trackside connection after years of working with Peter Bonnington, adding that “Bono's now doing it with Kimi [Antonelli].” He also described Santi as “very, very quiet” and said it was “hard for him to express his emotions,” but added that he had been “giving him these big hugs and pulling him in, saying thank you.”

He said: “I like to think that this has probably reignited the love that he has as being an engineer as he has done for me as a driver,” a sign that what began as a short-term fix has become an important part of Hamilton’s attempt to establish himself at Ferrari.