Lewis Hamilton rubbishes claims of rift with Ferrari race engineer

Telegraph

4 days ago

Lewis Hamilton has described speculation that he has a problem with Riccardo Adami, his new race engineer at Ferrari, as
'bull----', describing their relationship as 'great'.
Hamilton, 40, has had a number of spiky radio exchanges with the Italian, one year older than him at 41, during their short time working together.
But speaking ahead of this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, the seven-time world champion dismissed speculation that their relationship was a problem, describing Adami as 'a great guy' and 'amazing to work with'.
'We are both in it together,' Hamilton said. 'We both want to win a world championship together and we are both working towards lifting the team up. So it [the speculation] is all just noise and we are not paying attention to it. It doesn't make a difference to the job we are trying to do.'
Hamilton may be right. And it is true that every driver has exchanged cross words with his race engineer, none more publicly than Red Bull's Max Verstappen and his engineer Gianpiero 'GP' Lambiase, and it does not seem to have done them any harm.
But there is a growing body of evidence that Hamilton and Adami are not on the same wavelength, something Hamilton may be feeling more acutely after his longstanding and hugely successful relationship with Pete 'Bono' Bonnington at Mercedes, a man he trusted implicitly.
The tensions with Adami started at the first race in Melbourne, when Hamilton complained that he had been 'lacking information' from his pit wall. He was also heard telling Adami – who was Sebastian Vettel's race engineer at Toro Rosso and later at Ferrari, where he worked most recently with Carlos Sainz – to 'leave me to it' when the Italian tried to speak to him about various settings.
In Miami, Hamilton sarcastically told his team to ' have a tea break while you're at it ' after he felt Ferrari were far too slow to order his team mate Charles Leclerc aside when Hamilton was on a faster stint.
📻 | Lewis Hamilton: "In China I got out the way..."
📻 | Adami: "Understood... Understood we swap the cars in 17"
📻 | Lewis Hamilton: "And have a tea break while you're at it, come on"
pic.twitter.com/MM14STYok0
— La Gazzetta Ferrari (@GazzettaFerrari) May 4, 2025
Most recently, in Monaco, Hamilton appeared frustrated by the almost constant miscommunication between himself and Adami, frequently asking questions to which he received no answers, or else answers which did not relate to his questions.
Speculation really ramped up after radio messages were broadcast between Hamilton and his team on the cool-down lap, when Hamilton tried to gee his team up, thanking them for fixing his car after a smash in practice. He got no response. Later in the lap, Hamilton asked: 'Are you upset with me or something?' Again he got no response.
Ferrari's team principal Fred Vasseur has worked hard to quash the growing narrative. In China, Vasseur angrily accused Formula One of manipulating their coverage to make it look as if the team had ordered Hamilton to make way for the faster Leclerc, when in fact it was Hamilton who suggested doing so.
In Monaco, Vasseur again said there were no issues. 'When the driver is asking something between Turn 1 and Turn 3, we have to wait to the tunnel to reply to avoid speaking with him during the corners,' he said. 'It's not that we are sleeping, it's not that we are having a beer on the pit wall, it's just because we have a section of the track where we agreed before to speak with him.
'Honestly, it's not a tension that the guy is asking something. He's between the walls, he's under pressure, he's fighting, he's at 300 kilometres per hour between the walls. I'm perfectly fine [with it].'
On Thursday Hamilton once again moved to dismiss reports of a lack of compatibility with Adami, insisting they were on the same page. 'It [the messaging in Monaco] was literally just there were areas where we had radio problems through the race, and I did not get information that I wanted. We spoke afterwards.
'There is a lot of speculation and most of it is 'BS'[bull----]. We have a great relationship. He is amazing to work with. He is a great guy, working so hard. We both are.
'We don't always get it right every weekend. Do we have disagreements? Yes, like everyone does in relationships. But we work through them. We are both in it together.
'We both want to win a world championship together and we are both working towards lifting the team up. So it is just all noise and we are not paying attention to it. It doesn't make a difference to the job we are trying to do.'
Rules to flex in Ferrari's favour?
Hamilton will be hoping that his former team principal at Mercedes, Toto Wolff, was right when he predicted Ferrari would be the team to benefit most from a new technical directive being introduced at this race, limiting the amount of flex teams can exploit from their front wings under load.
McLaren's rivals are hoping that the Woking team, who have been dominant this year, winning six out of eight races, will be pegged back by the change, although no one in the paddock seems to think it will make too much of a difference.
'I don't think it will shake the order up too much,' George Russell said. 'We're all flexing our wings. I think we'll all take a step backwards and naturally some will take a bigger step backwards than others.
'I do see [McLaren] coming back towards us slightly. But they are, on average, so far ahead. I wouldn't expect more than one tenth [of a second] swing up and down throughout the field.'
Only Hamilton and Verstappen have won the Spanish Grand Prix since 2016 with the Briton winning five times and the Dutchman four.