It’s no secret that Lewis Hamilton is still adjusting to life at Ferrari. After 12 years with Mercedes, he made the move to red, and it hasn’t been a seamless transition. The car isn’t where they want it to be, and there has been some tension on the radio between Hamilton and his race engineer.
In the weeks between Silverstone and Spa, Ferrari made a change. They replaced Hamilton’s performance engineer, Riccardo Corte, with Luca Diella, someone Hamilton has worked with in the past, to try and help smooth out some of the disconnect between Hamilton and the team.
Lewis Hamilton reunites with Luca Diella
Luca Diella has worked with Hamilton at Mercedes in the past, but never as a performance engineer. After the Belgian Grand Prix, Hamilton was asked about the change. He said it’s hard to make an engineer change midseason, but their past relationship should help the transition.
“It’s not easy to switch engineers within the middle of the season, but it’s someone that I’ve known for years [and was] actually from my previous team with me, but not in that position,” Hamilton told the media. “So we’re getting used to each other and having to learn super, super quick.”
“I think the changes that we had [to the car this weekend] really caught both of us out, but I think we did a great job overnight and we’ll just get stronger and stronger together.”
The goal is for Diella and Hamilton’s race engineer, Riccardo Adami, to work alongside each other for the rest of the season. Hamilton and Adami have had their fair share of discourse over the radio, so we’ll see if Diella can help solve some of their miscommunication.
Ferrari hopes Diella can help smooth things over
Hamilton spent many years with Peter Bonnington as his race engineer. When he moved to Ferrari, he wasn’t able to bring Bonnington with him, which means for the first time in a long time, he’s had to learn to work with someone else.
Throughout the season, especially early on, we’ve heard Hamilton and Adami have a few miscommunications on the radio. The most notable of which came in Monaco when, after the race, Hamilton asked if Adami was upset with him, to which he got no reply.
A Complete Breakdown of the Heated Radio Messages Inside Ferrari
Despite these miscommunications, Hamilton was quick to say there’s no tension between the two; they’re just learning how to work together.
“Our relationship is great. No problems. We’re constantly learning more and more about each other, we’re constantly adapting to the way both of us like to work,” He told the media.
While communication between the two has seemingly gotten better as the season has gone along, Ferrari is promoting Diella in hopes of completely ironing out all the wrinkles. It may not happen this year, but the hope is that by 2026, they can hit the ground running.
