Lewis Hamilton 'alarm bells' highlighted ahead of new F1 season

Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok has highlighted “alarm bells” over Lewis Hamilton's race engineer situation ahead of the new season.

Ferrari confirmed earlier this month that Riccardo Adami would not serve as Hamilton's race engineer for the upcoming campaign after being paired together for the seven-time champion's debut season with the Italian squad.

However, Ferrari is yet to announce who will be the voice in Hamilton's ear this year, meaning Hamilton is not working with his permanent race engineer at the Barcelona shakedown this week.

With a full-time figure yet to be named, Chandhok asserted the situation is far from ideal for Hamilton as he looks to enjoy a more positive season with Ferrari this year.

“The other thing that’s ringing alarm bells for me is his engineer situation,” Chandhok told Sky F1.

“As far as we understand, Bryan Bozzi who is Charles Leclerc's race engineer, was running the car [on Tuesday], including for Lewis.

“That confuses me, if I’m perfectly honest. That relationship between driver and race engineer is so, so important.

“Getting the feedback from the driver, in my experience, a good engineer-driver relationship are the unspoken things. When one is complaining about something, the other is able to finish their sentence and say 'we're going to do this'.”

The relationship between Hamilton and Adami appeared sub-optimal during the 2025 campaign, with Hamilton sometimes heard voicing his frustration over the communication procedures.

Chandhok suggested Ferrari should have used the January period to get Hamilton and his new race engineer gelling together at a TPC (testing of previous car) outing.

“They haven’t created a situation where Lewis is building that relationship over the winter,” he said.

“I would have loved to see him do simulator days [or] go and get a TPC car and bond with a new race engineer.

“You need to integrate that person into the engineering set up of the race team. They have to work in an environment along with the other engineers when the driver is not around. 

“The public hear the driver-engineer discussion, but that’s just a microcosm of the bigger conversations happening in that engineering office.

“To me, I’m slightly confused that as we sit here, we’ve already started testing, that bonding and relationship-building hasn’t started, off the back of a season which was not good.”