With Lewis Hamilton moving to Ferrari in 2025, many F1 fans are hoping that the glory days will return to Maranello. As the Briton aims to win an eighth title himself, he will also hope to form a partnership as strong as Michael Schumacher did with the team back in the early 2000s. Schumacher had an extremely successful stint with the Prancing Horse after he got the major figures of his support system from Benetton to work alongside him at Maranello. They included Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne. However, former Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley does not believe that Hamilton can achieve similar success simply by replicating what Schumacher did.
On the Formula for Success podcast, Eddie Jordan quizzed Smedley about a possible influx of Hamilton‘s entourage from Mercedes to Ferrari. In reply, Smedley explained, “I think you have to be a little bit careful with that game.”
The 50-year-old believes that in the early 2000s, Ferrari were essentially rebuilding themselves. As a result, it made sense for tSchumacher to bring in people he knew and trusted. But with Hamilton, Ferrari are already the closest they’ve been to tasting championship success again.
With Hamilton set to move to Ferrari in 2025 in a massive $435,000,000 deal, speculations are high about the 39-year-old leading a mass exodus from the team. That being said, one man that Hamilton would definitely want to see move with him to Maranello is his race engineer, Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington. Bono has been Hamilton’s most trusted ally within the Silver Arrows and many experts believe he will make the switch with the seven-time champion at the end of the year.
Ferrari has already begun poaching Mercedes’ crucial staff
Lewis Hamilton’s deal has opened the floodgates at Mercedes and Ferrari have already started playing their hand at poaching some key members from the Silver Arrows. It is being reported that along with Hamilton, Fred Vasseur has now also secured another crucial signing from the Mercedes camp.
According to reports circulating on X (formerly Twitter), Ferrari has successfully managed to sign Jerome d’Ambrosio. D’Ambrosio is a former F1 driver who currently heads the driver development program at Mercedes.
The report suggests d’Ambrosio “will head up Ferrari’s driver development academy and that d’Ambrosio “has already agreed terms” with Vasseur and will head off to Maranello as soon as a period of gardening leave is over.”
This would be a big blow for Mercedes as d’Ambrosio was considered to be the next in line to Toto Wolff, if and when the Austrian decided to call it quits as the team principal.
