Fred Vasseur tells media to ‘stop with this story’ over Hamilton engineer change

Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, has pleaded with reporters to “stop with this story” regarding Lewis Hamilton’s change of race engineer for the F1 2026 season.

It comes after Hamilton warned at last week’s Bahrain test that the mid-season arrival of a new race engineer could prove “detrimental” to his 2026 hopes.

Fred Vasseur addresses Lewis Hamilton’s ‘detrimental’ race engineer change

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Hamilton endured a troubled first season with Ferrari in 2025 as the seven-time world champion failed to score a podium finish across a season for the first time in his career.

The 41-year-old’s first year in red was defined by a number of awkward and tense exchanges with race engineer Riccardo Adami, who previously worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz.

Ferrari announced last month that Hamilton is to work with a new race engineer in F1 2026 after Adami was moved to a new role within the organisation.

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Cedric Michel-Grosjean, Oscar Piastri’s former trackside performance engineer at McLaren, is widely expected to be installed as Hamilton’s new full-time race engineer.

However, Michel-Grosjean – who is currently on what he describes a career break after leaving McLaren at the end of last year – is unlikely to start work at Ferrari for some weeks.

Hamilton – who is being overseen by Kimi Raikkonen’s former race engineer Carlo Santi in testing – told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets that the identity of his race engineer will once again change within “a few races” of the start of the new season.

He went on to claim that the change risks being “detrimental” to his campaign, vowing that he will “try and do the best I can.”

Hamilton’s comments led some to claim that he is already making excuses for 2026 having suffered the worst season of his career last year.

Vasseur has insisted that the seven-time world champion “is in a very good mindset” ahead of the new season with the collaboration between team and driver “very good.”

Put to him that Hamilton fears his change of race engineer could have a negative effect on his season, Vasseur told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets: “It’s not exactly the discussion that we had.

“I think the collaboration between the team and Lewis on the pit wall is very good.

“It’s not that he was not committed, but [is high] in confidence and very open to the relationship.

“My feeling is very positive with this and we will continue to improve. The mindset is to try to do a better job tomorrow than today.

“I think that if we have areas where we can improve, I will continue to push in this direction, but Lewis is in a very good mindset.”

A few minutes later, when in the process of being asked another question about Hamilton’s change of race engineer, Vasseur interrupted: “Please stop with this story!

“If you go into the paddock of 22 cars, you have approximately six or seven new engineers each year and the same with the team principals.

“I’m probably the oldest [longest-serving] one with Toto [Wolff, team boss of Mercedes]. You are changing three or four team principals each year and it’s not the end of the team.

“The team today is something like 1,500 people. It’s not about one race engineer.

“The guy that you see on the pit wall is leading a team of people working on the car and it’s not a matter of individuals.

“In F1, it’s always about the team. It’s never about an individual.”

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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