Ferrari receive emphatic verdict on shock Lewis Hamilton engineer change

F1 fans have given emphatic backing to Ferrari's decision to remove Riccardo Adami as Lewis Hamilton's race engineer.

Adami, who had previously worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz, has been moved across to a position within the Ferrari Driver Academy and the TPC programme after a troubled first year for Hamilton with the Scuderia.

Although there were early teething troubles between the two, which is to be expected as the relationship formed, even in the Abu Dhabi finale, there were signs that Hamilton-Adami had not clicked, with Hamilton repeating an instruction multiple times.

The identity of Hamilton's third race engineer in as many seasons after Peter Bonnington at Mercedes in 2024 and Adami in 2025 has yet to be confirmed, just weeks ahead of pre-season testing and the first race in Australia on March 8th.

However, according to the results of a poll on the news by RacingNews365, a total of 91.53% of voters believe Ferrari has made the correct decision to remove Adami. 

But some of the 8.53% who backed Adami defended the Italian. 

"Very sad that a seasoned person has had to carry the can for Hamilton's failure to live up to some people's expectations!," wrote flash with users invited to leave comments, with ParrotSoundingGoulding claiming the Scuderia had "sidelined the wrong man."

Fairracingcountsmost offered a theory that it was not Adami or Hamilton who were at fault, but the Ferrari system itself, given the failures of Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel before Hamilton.

"It may look a bit like he has taken the rap for the bad results in the team, but he did have some good runs with Carlos Sainz Jr., but 3 world champions have gone to that team and gone nowhere, clearly something has been drastically wrong in the team, and change had to come from the team itself, not the drivers."

Others did point to the troubles Adami had had with Vettel and Sainz as a reason why Ferrari were right to remove him off Hamilton's car.