Ferrari is yet to decide about Hamilton's race engineer
Ferrari-bound seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has revealed that he is still unsure with whom he will work at the Scuderia after his current race engineer Peter Bonnington has recently expanded his contract at Mercedes.
Peter Bonnington, often known as Bono, is currently Lewis Hamilton's race engineer at Mercedes. The Briton started his Formula 1 career as a data engineer with Jordan Grand Prix in 2004.
During his time with the Silverstone team he worked alongside the likes of Giorgio Pantano and Timo Glock. He then joined the Honda team as an understudy to long time race engineer Andrew Shovlin and therefore became Jenson Button’s performance engineer. Bonnington remained with the team as it transitioned into Brawn GP, guiding Button to his maiden World Championship in 2009.
After a stint as Michael Schumacher's performance engineer at Mercedes, he became his race engineer replacing the departing Mark Slade in September 2011. After Schumacher left the Brackley team at the end of 2012, Bonnington became senior race engineer for Lewis Hamilton, a position he retains to this day.
It has recently emerged that Bonnington has moved up to head of race engineering but will remain as Hamilton's race engineer for the remainder of the season.
Speaking to the media at Zandvoort, Hamilton reflected on his race engineers during his F1 career.
“The team often [decides] for you,” Hamilton told media including Crash.net ahead of this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. “I’ve had two number ones in my career. That’s not true actually; I’ve had Philip Prew, I’ve had Andy Lacombe, and I’ve had one other.
“When I joined this team, I just came in and Bono was the current head engineer at the time. It’s got to be someone you get on with, it’s got to be someone that you ultimately are able to find it easy to build a relationship with and trust.
“So the next one, that’s going to be a discovery process. I’ll know early on whether or not it’s going to work or not. I think it’s just about communicating.”
Hamilton admitted he would have love to continue to work with Bonnington, but it would have been a very tough decision for the British engineers for personal reasons.
“I would have loved to have continued with Bono, of course. We have a great relationship. You heard in Silverstone, he’s like a brother. But I’m really, really, really happy for him,” Hamilton said.
“Like for me, it’s just about people doing what’s best, you have to do whatever’s best for you. Packing up and leaving, I can only imagine it’s not, him and his partner, it impacts both of them, so they have to do whatever’s right for him.
“I knew it would be like an unlikely scenario that he would go with me, because it’s such a drastic change within his life. But I’m really happy the team have acknowledged and made changes to this pathway within the team so he can grow more with it.
“I think he’ll now be able to show even more of the great things that he’s been doing. But either way, we’re going to be family forever. We’ve spoken about it. We just want to make sure we finish on a high.”
The seven-time world champion has revealed that Ferrari is yet to decide about the race engineer with whom he will work together at the Scuderia.
“No. It’s tough. That makes it really difficult. I think it’s probably the same for anyone moving into a new office. It’s not until you go. It’ll be very heavy-loaded at the start of next year.”
