Hamilton and new race engineer 'need to have conversation' after Australia

Former F1 driver and current Sky Sports analyst Karun Chandhok believes that Lewis Hamilton and his brand-new race engineer Riccardo Adami need to "have a conversation" before the Chinese Grand Prix after the two of them struggled with communication throughout the Australian Grand Prix.

Hamilton's move to Ferrari comes with a lot of brand-new parts, and one of those is moving away from long-time race engineer Peter 'Bono' Bonnington at Mercedes, now working with Adami, who has also been the engineer of Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz when they were at the Scuderia.

However, at the Australian Grand Prix, it was clear that the Brit and his new engineer were not on the same page 100% of the time, with the communication between the two not to the seven-time world champion's liking. Adami gave Hamilton information when he perhaps did not want to hear it during the Grand Prix, with the 40-year-old cutting off his engineer because it was too much information for him.

Speaking on this, Chandhok started by saying, "One of the things that came out of all the radio messages we played was he and his engineer Riccardo Adami need to have a bit more time to understand just how much communication Lewis wants and what type of information.

"There were a number of times Lewis asked, tell me something, they would give him information but then Lewis said it's too much, stop telling him and leave it to me. They just need to build that bond," continued the Indian

But after just one race of the 2025 season and of Hamilton's Ferrari career so far, Chandhok does not see it as a huge issue just yet: "Race engineers and drivers will spend more time together than they do with their partners in the season. It's still round one and they just have to find their feet, maybe have a conversation between now and China. I would be interested to listen to the radio in China and see if it's different. They just need to have a conversation," concluded the 41-year-old.

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