Lewis Hamilton is gearing up for arguably the most important season of his career. 7-time F1 champion moves to ferrari In 2025, the first season wasn’t the best. At the start of the second season in 2026, it was announced that the driver would no longer continue racing with his race engineer, Riccardo Adami.

He will get a new one in 2026, but so far, none have been assigned to him. Still, there’s less than a month until the start of the 2026 F1 season.

With so little time left, questions have been raised about where the driver’s new race engineer will be. What’s more, it’s hardly the kind of preparation you want for a driver in the most important years of his career.

Why Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer was moved to another role

If there’s one thing that’s very apparent about Lewis Hamilton in 2025, it’s his lack of chemistry with race engineer Ricardo Adami. The seven-time F1 champion has worked with Pete ‘Bono’ Bonnington for more than a decade and has developed a level of chemistry with him.

He felt comfortable with Bono, but he couldn’t develop with Adami, and there were too many moments during the season when things didn’t work out and Lewis Hamilton sounded excited on the team radio.

By 2025, it quickly became apparent that things were not going forward and replacing Adami made perfect sense when Hamilton still felt uncomfortable by the end of the year.

No immediate replacement

The problem with announcing and ousting Adami is a unique fact: A replacement has not yet been announced. Ideally, in a well-functioning organization, if a resource is to be replaced, the replacement resource is arranged first so that no loss is incurred.

Ferrari has not announced any replacement for Ricciardo, with Lewis Hamilton heading into Barcelona’s first test without a race engineer since his departure. This is neither an ideal nor a perfect way for a driver to prepare for the new season and he needs to simplify every aspect of his preparation.

Why delays could hurt Lewis Hamilton

Arguably, the biggest issue here is that such disruption harms Lewis Hamilton’s preparations for 2026. One of the reasons he said goodbye to his former racing engineer was that he couldn’t have the right chemistry with him. In hindsight, if we look back at the 2025 F1 season, it’s hard to disagree with the view that racing engineers and drivers were unable to solve the problem.

But what’s the point of not having a designated race engineer four weeks before the first race? Unfortunately, this is not the case.

The less time a racing engineer has to join Ferrari, adapt to the team and develop a relationship with Lewis Hamilton, the less likely he is to make consistent progress with the driver.

in conclusion

Lewis Hamilton’s former race engineer has been sacked due to a lack of chemistry between him and the driver. With just four weeks left in the season and replacements still not in place, it’s not the best pre-season the drivers could have hoped for.

Hamilton is heading into the 2026 F1 season knowing full well it could be his last year in the sport. The seriousness of the situation is self-evident, and by that stage, preparations should have been complete.

Unfortunately, that’s not to be the case, and Hamilton is gearing up for his second season at Ferrari, which could be his last.