Article

To news overview © XPBimages

The timing of the announcement of Lewis Hamilton changing his Ferrari race engineer has been questioned by Karun Chandhok.

On January 16th, it was announced that Riccardo Adami was to be moved off engineering Hamilton to head up Ferrari's young driver and historic testing programmes after he and Hamilton had failed to gel.

Even in the final race of 2025 in Abu Dhabi, there were teething troubles between Hamilton and Adami, with it being widely anticipated that a change was going to be made ahead of 2026.

However, a replacement has not been named for Adami despite pre-season testing already being underway and the first race quickly approaching.

Given the importance of the driver-engineer relationship, former F1 racer turned pundit Chandhok has questioned why the announcement of Adami's removal took so long, given it would harm the bonding process of Hamilton and his new engineer.

"I honestly find the whole thing a little strange," Chandhok told talkSport.

"Because if they were going to make that decision, why did they not make it in Decmeber as the relationship between the driver and their race engineer is so important for success.

"You think of a Tennis player, and their coach. They need to work in sync 24 hours a day.

"So I feel like this is a decision they should have probably made in December and allowed Lewis and the engineer to build a relationship over the winter by using the simulator and things like that.

"But it is what it is, and they still haven't announced who the replacement for Riccardo Adami is, so let's wait and see how it plays out."

Also interesting:

Join RacingNews365's Ian Parkes and Nick Golding, as they look back on last week's five-day F1 test in Barcelona. McLaren's upgrade strategy is discussed, as is Aston Martin grabbing much attention with its striking AMR26.

Rather watch the podcast? Then click here!