Lewis Hamilton has spoken about the pending split between himself and Pete Bonnington after almost 12 years of working together.
With Hamilton moving to Ferrari, the confirmation from Mercedes of his long-time race engineer Pete Bonnington securing a promotion at Brackley means the most successful driver/race engineer partnership in F1 history will end after this season.
While a move to Ferrari wasn’t a hugely likely one for Bonnington, speculation had kept the possibility alive as the identity of Hamilton’s future race engineer at Ferrari isn’t yet known.
The most likely candidate is Carlos Sainz’s incumbent race engineer Riccardo Adami, with Italian media having reported Hamilton has been in contact with Sebastian Vettel – who also raced with Adami during his own Ferrari tenure – to get his impression on the Italian.
Mercedes’ confirmation of a promotion for Pete ‘Bono’ Bonnington – as first reported earlier this week by PlanetF1.com – brings to an end any possibility of a team switch, with Bonnington stepping up to become the team’s head of race engineering alongside a race engineer role for a team driver next season.
Bonnington will continue to work with Hamilton until the end of this year, before the pair part ways. It concludes 12 years of history between Hamilton and Bonnington, whose long and successful partnership has become symbiotic through six Drivers’ Championship victories.
“Was I hoping?” Hamilton replied as he spoke to media, including PlanetF1.com, at Zandvoort about his hopes Bonnington might make the switch to Ferrari with him.
“I would have loved to have continued with Bono, of course, we have a great relationship. You saw that at Silverstone, he’s like a brother, but I’m really, really, really happy for him.
“For me, I think it’s just about people doing what’s best, to do whatever’s best for you.”
A switch for Bonnington was always going to be complicated, given the existence of an anti-poaching clause in Hamilton’s contract which prevented him from having any direct involvement in a team switch for Mercedes employees he currently works with, but the seven-time F1 World Champion said moving to Italy would have been a big change and demand on Bonnington’s personal life.
“Packing up and leaving, I can only imagine it’s not… him and his partner, it affects and impacts both of them,” Hamilton said.
“So they had to do whatever was right for him. I knew it would be an unlikely scenario that he would go with me, because it’s such a drastic change in his, but I’m really happy for us as a team.
“The team has acknowledged and made changes so he can grow more, I think he’ll now be able to show us even more of the great things he’s been doing.
With Hamilton about to embark on a new chapter in his career with a new race engineer, he spoke about how crucial it is that the driver gets along with the engineer – even if a duo are thrust together without any input from either side.
“The team often does it for you,” he said.
“I’ve only worked with two engineering teams, like number ones in my career. No, it’s not true actually.
“I had Phil Prew, I had Andy Laytham, and, when I joined this team, I just came in and Bono was the current head engineer at the time.
“I mean, it’s got to be someone you get on with. It’s got to be someone that you are able to find it easy to, ultimately, build a relationship with, and trust.
“So the next one, that’s going to be a discovery process. I’ll know early on whether or not it’s going to work or not, and I think it’s just about communicating.”
Predicting a very “heavy-loaded” start to next season as he “moves into a new office”, Hamilton was asked whether he is expecting any other Mercedes personnel to come across to Ferrari when he makes the move.
“Not that I know of,” he said.
“There’s a few people there, like Loic [Serra] that I’ve worked with. There’s someone there that left me a long time ago, he was my number two, Jock.
“So I know him, he’s the one I know mostly there, apart from Fred, and then I don’t know anybody else.”
