Lewis Hamilton 'in at deep end' with new Ferrari F1 engineer

Lewis Hamilton has revealed he is working with a new Ferrari engineer, and that the duo were thrown "in the deep end" during the Belgian Grand Prix. 

The new engineer, whom Ferrari is not releasing any details about, is a performance engineer and does not replace Hamilton's race engineer Riccardo Adami, who has previously worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz. 

After a tricky Sprint section of the weekend, Hamilton was eliminated in Q1 after a track limits violation, with Ferrari then opting to start him from the pit lane after a power unit and set-up changes.

In addition, the Scuderia was also running an upgrade during the Sprint weekend as Hamilton described how he and his new engineer, whom he indicated he had worked with previously, had been given a tough introduction. 

"I made some changes overnight, and the upgrade had two elements to it, and one of those elements we had to test back in Montreal, but I didn't end up testing it," Hamilton began to tell media, including RacingNews365. 

"Charles ended up testing it and using it for a couple of races, and he is more acclimatised, as it was the first time for me using it, and it caught me out as we didn't have the settings. 

"I've also had a change of engineer, so we're both in the deep end basically."

When then further pushed on the new engineer, Hamilton did not divulge too much information about the new engineer.

"It’s not easy to switch engineers within the middle of the season," he said. 

"But it's someone that I've known for years and was actually from my previous team with me, but not in that position.

"So we're getting used to each other and having to learn super, super quickly.

"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 [into Sunday], and we'll just get stronger and stronger together."