Lewis Hamilton reveals engineer change before Belgian GP

Lewis Hamilton has revealed that a change to his engineering team was made ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton produced a charging comeback drive in Belgium as he battled his way from the back of the grid to finish inside the points in seventh.

Up until the race, Hamilton had endured a weekend to forget, having been eliminated in the first part of qualifying in two consecutive days and failed to score in the sprint race.

Hamilton revealed he has a new performance engineer to work alongside race engineer Riccardo Adami and indicated it is someone he has worked with at his “previous team”, which implies Mercedes.

“It’s not easy to switch engineers within the middle of the season, but it's someone that I've known for years [and was] actually from my previous team with me, but not in that position,” Hamilton said after Sunday’s race.

“So we're getting used to each other and having to learn super, super quick. 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 and we'll just get stronger and stronger together.”

Neither Hamilton nor Ferrari provided details on who exactly the new performance engineer is.

Hamilton says Belgian GP ‘one to put behind me’

Hamilton had blamed a combination of a new component and brake issues for his sprint qualifying spin that left him down in 18th on the grid for the sprint race. 

Ferrari brought a revised rear suspension to Spa and Hamilton admitted that teammate Charles Leclerc had got acclimatised with the package quicker as he went on to claim third place in the main grand prix. 

“Obviously with the upgrade that we have, there's basically two elements to it,” Hamilton explained.

“One of those elements, we had it to test back in Montreal, but I didn't end up testing it. Charles did. He ended up using part of it for a couple of races.

"So he definitely did a great job today. He's feeling more comfortable and acclimatised. For me, it was the first time using it and that spin we had caught me out because I didn’t expect it.

“Also [there is the] change of engineer, we're both in the deep end basically. And I think we did a really good job overnight to rectify some of those tweaks and fine tune it.

“The car was so much better to drive today. So I had a lot of fun trying to make my way through.”

Hamilton added: “I think this one is definitely one to put behind me. I definitely feel confident going forward.

“I learned more about the car today, fine-tuned it. I'll set that up better for next week.

“I will be at the factory on Wednesday. So yeah, I don't see why we can't have better results moving forward.”