- Lewis Hamilton names Carlo Santi his “Italian Bono” ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.
- Santi’s calm radio presence has helped Hamilton to two podiums in five races.
- A poor 2025 and a difficult engineer pairing pushed Hamilton to reshape Ferrari setup.
Lewis Hamilton says his new Ferrari race engineer, Carlo Santi, reminds him of the man he spent 13 years building a championship dynasty with at Mercedes.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, the seven-time world champion called Santi his “Italian Bono,” drawing a direct line between the 52-year-old Italian and Peter Bonnington, the engineer who guided him to six of his seven titles.
The compliment matters because of the name attached to it. Bonnington is widely regarded as one of the finest race engineers in the sport’s history. Comparing anyone to him is not something Hamilton does lightly.
Why Hamilton sees Bono in Santi
Hamilton’s praise centres on character, not just competence. “I feel that Carlo is very similar to Bono,” he said, via comments shared by AutoRacer Italy. “For me, he is kind of an OG. One of those veterans who has seen a lot, has huge experience and is always extremely calm.”
That calm matters when things go sideways at 300 kilometres per hour. A composed voice on the radio, one that does not rise under pressure, is something drivers lean on. Hamilton told reporters in Monaco that Santi provides exactly that.
“You can hear him on the radio,” he said. That is a simple thing to say, and it tells you everything.
Santi is not new to high-pressure environments. He was Kimi Raikkonen’s race engineer during the Finn’s final Ferrari season in 2018. More recently, he ran Ferrari’s remote engineering operation from Maranello before moving onto Hamilton’s pit wall this season.
A relationship that took time to build
Hamilton arrived at Ferrari last year with high hopes and a new engineer, Riccardo Adami. The partnership never quite caught fire. Their team radio exchanges were tense at times, and the results bore that out.
Hamilton did not reach a single podium across all 24 races in 2025, the worst season of his career by any measure. However, he was careful not to blame Adami for that.
“Last year, Adami and I had a really good relationship. He’s a lovely guy. We work relatively well together,” he said. But he acknowledged that matching a driver with the right engineer takes time. “Catering to a driver’s needs takes time to learn,” he added.
Hamilton explained how he works with engineers, breaking a lap down, corner by corner, to pinpoint exactly where the car is fighting him. That level of detail requires trust.
With Bonnington, he said, “it hit off from the beginning mostly.” With Santi, that connection has come quickly too. Sky Sports News understands there are no current plans to change the arrangement.
Results that back up the praise
Hamilton’s words carry more weight because the numbers support them. He has two podium finishes in the first five races of 2026 after going without one all of last year.
The most recent came in Montreal, where he overtook Max Verstappen late in the race to finish second behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli, who now works with Bonnington.
Hamilton called Montreal “the happiest day of my days at Ferrari so far.” He credited the shift to changes he has pushed for inside the team.
“A lot of pawns have moved, managed to move a lot of things on the chessboard, and reposition myself, I think, within the team,” he said.
He now sits just three points behind team-mate Charles Leclerc in the standings, having outperformed him across the Canadian weekend.
Monaco is next, a circuit Hamilton has won three times and one that should suit Ferrari’s strengths in slow corners. He says he is “not listening to any of the hype,” but he does concede it is “probably the track that is better for us than some of the others.”
