After yet more radio tension with Riccardo Adami, Juan Pablo Montoya has told Lewis Hamilton to get “angry” and demand a new race engineer.

Swapping from Mercedes to Ferrari in the off-season, and saying goodbye to his long-time race engineer Peter Bonnington, Hamilton was partnered with Adami for his first season with Ferrari.

Does Lewis Hamilton need a new race engineer?

It’s been a difficult adjustment period.

Hamilton and Adami’s radio conversations have made headlines with the two snapping at one another.

It came to a head at the Miami Grand Prix when Hamilton voiced his frustration when Ferrari were slow to issue team orders to Charles Leclerc to move over for him.

“Ah, have a tea break while you’re at it!” Hamilton complained. “Come on! This is not good team work, that’s all I’m gonna say.”

Told late in the race to then hand the position back to Leclerc and that Carlos Sainz was as second behind him, Hamilton cuttingly said: “You want me to let him pass as well?”

Two races later in Monaco, there was more frustration over confusing radio messages. Bringing his Ferrari back to the pits having finished fifth, Hamilton asked Adami: “Are you upset with me or something?”

He was met with silence.

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Hamilton denied talk of tension as he told the media including PlanetF1.com: “We don’t have any problems whatsoever.

“There’s a lot of speculation. I mean, most of it is BS.

“Ultimately, we have a great relationship. He’s been amazing to work with. He’s a great guy, working so hard, we both are, and we don’t always get it right every weekend.

“Do we have disagreements? Like everyone does in relationships, but we work through them. We’re both in it together.”

However, there were more niggles in Spain where Hamilton reported a shift issue that then came right. Told to box by Adami, he refused to and instead stayed out to practice a start.

Adami: Try again to downshift now, please. If it’s working, otherwise we box.
Hamilton: I just told you it’s working.
Adami: We prefer to box to check.
Hamilton: Downshift working.
Adami: Box.
Hamilton: I can do the start dude, it’s fine.

Montoya believes the time has come for Hamilton to request a new race engineer.

“I don’t think I’m in on it, but it sounds like: ‘Look, your team-mate can drive it’, That’s the problem, that’s it,” the former F1 driver told AS Colombia.

“That happens a lot, and at some point, I don’t know what happened after the race, but at some point, Lewis is going to have to get angry and suddenly ask for a change of engineers or something.

“Because if he makes a change of engineers, it would be good for the people around him to say: ‘Do I work with Lewis or will he take me out?’

“And that’s what Lewis needs at this point, because the engineer, the attitude of not answering the radio, you have to be more professional than that and a person like that isn’t healthy for him, [the] team, it’s not healthy for anyone personally.

“If I were with Ferrari, I would have pulled his ears [Adami’s], and said: ‘You do that again, and you’ll be working at a desk in the office because we’re still not interested, do you understand?”

Hamilton did defend Adami following their post-Monaco exchange, or lack thereof, as he revealed Ferrari had a few radio issues during the Grand Prix and that they had communicated after his “upset” question.

“It was literally just there was areas we had radio problems through the race,” said Hamilton, “didn’t get all the information that I wanted. And yeah, we spoke afterwards.”

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