One of the areas where Lewis Hamilton has faced a major challenge in his first two races at Ferrari is the communication with his new race engineer, Riccardo Adami. The Briton had a frustrating exchange over the usage of the K1 button at the season-opener in Australia.
Hamilton wasn’t keen on Adami’s persistent radio calls to him about pressing the K1 button and firmly replied, “Leave me to it”. Since then, their radio conversations have been under the spotlight. Many feel that they are just getting to know each other, which is why they are not on the same wavelength in terms of radio communication.
Having spent 12 seasons at Mercedes, Hamilton had developed a great rapport with his former race engineer, Peter Bonnington. Even though Bonnington also had some heated exchanges with the seven-time champion, he had an understanding of how to handle Hamilton’s frustrated responses and not tick him off further.
Perhaps that’s what Adami is missing, and he may develop it as the season progresses. But given that race engineering and pit wall communication have been an inherent issue at Ferrari, F1 driver coach Martin Villari feels that the Scuderia’s engineers should vacate their posts to let in newer talent, who can communicate better.
“I don’t think you should be in a race engineering role if you can’t communicate. One of the core skills of a race engineer, if it’s not empathy and communication, then I don’t know what else it needs to be,” Villari said in his recent Instagram post.
Villari stated that race engineers need to “nurture” drivers through the race and give them “the right information at the right time”. Adami’s way of persistently reminding Hamilton to press the K1 button wasn’t aligned with how the Briton prefers his radio communication to be.
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Villari feels that there are talented individuals out there who are “great communicators” and would fancy being a race engineer at Ferrari. However, Adami has some support from Sky Sports F1 pundit Karun Chandhok, who reiterated that Hamilton just needs to spend more time with the Italian engineer to resolve these radio troubles.
Hamilton’s stand on his dynamic with Adami
Having been in the ears of drivers like Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz, Adami has excellent experience in F1 as a race engineer. And given that verbal tussles with drivers are a part of the job for race engineers, the Italian won’t worry about it too much.
From Hamilton’s perspective, though, he is feeling the change of personnel on the pit wall, owing to his decade-long stint at Mercedes. “I don’t know which tools to use at the moment. I’m heavily reliant, for the first time, on my engineers” he said during the Australian GP weekend.
New team, new race engineer for Lewis #F1 #AusGP pic.twitter.com/Aquzh45ViX
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 16, 2025
He also recalled how Bonnington and his colleagues used to know what his expectations were and so responded aptly to his needs on the track. “They’ve done a great job, but in the past, I would say, ‘Bono, this is what I want. That setting, this setting,” Hamilton recalled.
Nevertheless, the 40-year-old understands Adami’s situation, as the Italian is also getting used to a new driver in the car he is managing. Knowing that they have to build a rapport to have better radio communication, Hamilton has praised Adami’s efforts to ease him into life at Ferrari.
“I think Riccardo did a really good job. We’re learning about each other bit by bit. After this we’ll download, go through all the comments, the things I said, and vice versa,” he said.
Hamilton always looks to have a constructive dialogue with his support staff, which is what he stated he would be doing with Adami in the debrief after the Australian GP. While things seem to have improved in China, we will get a clear picture of how Hamilton and Adami’s pairing is gelling in a few races.
