Lewis Hamilton’s first race with Ferrari was disappointing for fans after he only just finished inside the top 10 places in the Australian Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion looked on course to finish in ninth place after a strategy error from Ferrari put both their drivers on the back foot during a late Safety Car.
But a late overtake from Oscar Piastri at Turn 9 demoted Hamilton to P10, with Martin Brundle saying the Briton will likely not want to watch the overtake back after losing out so easily.
It’s clear there is a lot of work for Hamilton and Ferrari to get through before they can start to challenge for race victories on merit, and one area is in the team radio.
Early Hamilton Mercedes team radio’s will give them hope they will solve Ferrari problem
Hamilton and engineer Riccardo Adami appeared to struggle with communication over team radio, with the seven-time world champion instructing him not to repeat information at the start of the race.
Adami would go on to repeat sentences and commands, prompting a ‘polite’ response from Hamilton who asked him to stop giving information.
Some attributed it to the fact that Adami was used to working with Carlos Sainz for the last three years, and thus, provided Hamilton with the same level of information.
In reality, the messages were not too dissimilar from when Hamilton worked with Peter Bonnington in his first year at Mercedes in 2013. A look at the messages then show a similar trend; Hamilton wants less information and for Bono to simplify his instructions.
| Engineer | Driver |
| Bonnington: “Target minus one so you can push, push.” | |
| Hamilton: “You’re confusing the hell out of me man!” |
On one occasion, Hamilton gets agitated by the lack of information from Bono who thought he was looking at what was displayed on his pit board. It is known that Hamilton doesn’t usually look at his pit board during races and prefers to receive crucial information through the radio.
| Engineer | Driver |
| Hamilton: “This whole time you haven’t given me any information. I thought I was racing Perez.” | |
| Bonnington: “Ok sorry about that, Lewis. Guess you can’t see your pit board then.” |
Hamilton likes clear and direct instructions as opposed to engineering-related terms when driving, understandable given he is driving at 180mph out on track.
| Engineer | Driver |
| Bonnington: “Can you go diff entry four, diff high speed four.” | |
| Hamilton: “Hey man, I’m trying to focus here, I’m happy with the way the car is. Do you want me to increase pace?” | |
| Bonnington: “Just keep doing what you’re doing at the moment.” |
Lewis Hamilton and Riccardo Adami need time work out relationship
F1 race engineers and drivers are probably the most important relationships in the paddock, because they will spend a lot of time with each other trying to optimise car performance.
Successful partnerships such as Sebastian Vettel and Guillaume Rocquelin, Max Verstappen and Gianpiero Lambiase, and Michael Schumacher and Chris Dyer all had their fair share of niggles early on in their relationship before they worked things out.
Charles Leclerc is going through the same thing with his engineer, Bryan Bozzi, having switched midway through last season. Their partnership is still in the early stages, as evidenced by the bizarre exchange between the pair during Sunday’s race in which Leclerc asked Bozzi if there was a ‘leak’ in his car and clarified that there was “a lot of water in the cockpit” only for the Italian to respond: “Must be the water” in reference to the rain.
Hamilton personally asked Vettel about Adami, with the German having previously worked with him when he was at Ferrari, so he knew it was an important match-up.
I would expect things to become more streamlined in the next few races, but it could take at least 12 months before they get to a stage where Bono was with Hamilton during his latter years at Mercedes.
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