Ferrari warned ‘this isn’t a call centre’ as Hamilton changes race engineers

Rob Smedley has warned Lewis Hamilton’s interim race engineer Carlo Santi that “this isn’t a call centre” following the Briton’s failed partnership with Riccardo Adami.

Hamilton will start the F1 2026 championship with a new race engineer in Santi, who has replaced Adami as the voice in the seven-time world champion’s ear following a difficult 2025 campaign.

Rob Smedley questions Ferrari race engineer dynamic after Riccardo Adami split

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After 12 years with Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington as his race engineer at Mercedes, Hamilton had to adjust to a new race engineer in Adami last year, his first year with Ferrari.

But it was anything but a successful partnership as Hamilton was unable to secure a single grand prix podium.

From “tea breaks” to silence, swipes at letting drivers from other teams through, to questions about fairness, Hamilton and Adami could not make it work in their 24 races together, leaving Ferrari to decide that it would be best to separate the two.

The Scuderia announced last month that Hamilton would not continue with Adami, moving the race engineer into a different role within the company.

The team revealed Santi, Kimi Räikkönen’s former race engineer, would replace him but only, Hamilton says, for a “few races”.

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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.

Hamilton told PlanetF1.com and other media in Bahrain that he was concerned that changing race engineers during the season would be “detrimental” to his chances this season.

However, his team principal Fred Vasseur told the media to “stop with this story”, after all, “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”.

But given the importance of a driver’s relationship with his race engineer, the story shows no sign of slowing, never mind stopping.

Former Ferrari race engineer Smedley, who worked with Felipe Massa, weighed in on the topic.

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, he was asked how much of a race engineer’s job is understanding the driver and how much is the technical know-how.

“I honestly think it’s 50/50,” he explained.

“From what I know of other sports like football and rugby, it’s always about a 50/50 split when you work with athletes.

“In a Formula 1 team, the race engineer is effectively the head coach for that driver, so you can’t turn up with no idea about the technical side of the job.

“It’s really important that you understand how the car works, how the driver interacts with the vehicle, and how you optimise that whole package.

“But if you don’t understand that there’s a human being in the car, an athlete with all the flaws that we ‘mere mortals’ have, then it’s never going to work.”

Going on to speak specifically about Hamilton’s relationship with Adami, Smedley touched on last year’s radio exchanges from the team break to the silence in Monaco.

“If those kinds of comments are happening on the radio, the relationship isn’t fully formed yet, and that’s where it can become unhealthy. It’s a clear sign that frustrations are boiling over,” he said.

“By the way, it is the job of the race engineer to know enough about the car and be across their work so that when the driver asks a question, you can answer quickly.

“It pains me when I hear ‘we’ll get back to you.’ This isn’t a call centre.

“The driver is trying to perform at 10/10 while driving at 200 mph. Answer him and give him confidence. If you respond like you need to go ask someone else, those tiny moments erode trust, and the relationship becomes tense.

“The Ferrari engineer in question has had a long and successful career, and he was recommended to Lewis by Sebastian Vettel. He had a great relationship and a lot of success with Sebastian. But sometimes it’s like my story with Felipe in 2006: if it doesn’t gel, it doesn’t work.”

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