Future of Lewis Hamilton’s F1 race engineer Carlo Santi confirmed by Ferrari

Carlo Santi is expected to remain as Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 race engineer at Ferrari. 

Santi was initially brought in to be a stop-gap solution on a temporary basis while Ferrari looked for a new full-time race engineer for Hamilton this season. 

The move to bring in Santi came after Riccardo Adami, who engineered Hamilton throughout a hugely disappointing and challenging debut season with Ferrari in 2025, was moved into another position within the company. 

Santi took up the role as Hamilton’s race engineer during pre-season testing and has continued to be the voice in the seven-time world champion’s ear throughout the opening seven rounds of 2026. 

Hamilton was joined on the podium by Santi after taking a spectacular first victory with Ferrari at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

And according to BBC Sport, Ferrari has no plans to replace Santi. 

“Carlo and Lewis are working pretty well together and there's no plan to replace him,” a Ferrari spokesperson told BBC Sport. 

Hamilton heaped glowing praise on the 52-year-old Italian following his maiden triumph in red last time out in Spain. 

"It was great to have him up there [on the podium]," Hamilton said of Santi. "I think, you know, him kind of substituting this year, jumping in and diving in deep with me, we didn't know each other, we'd never spoken and I didn't know anything about him.

"And we met and I think got on straight away - it's great to be able to connect with an engineer other than what I used to have. You know, I had it for such a long time and then you kind of lose that feeling because Bono's now doing it with Kimi [Antonelli].

"It's really great to be able to share that experience with him on that stage, and also probably, like, he's very, very quiet.

"You could tell it's hard for him to express his emotions. He's just smiley and, you know, I'm giving him these big hugs and pulling him in, saying thank you.

"I like to think that this has probably reignited the love that he has as being an engineer as he has done for me as a driver.”

Santi previously worked with Kimi Raikkonen and engineered the 2007 world champion to his 21st and final F1 victory at the 2018 United States Grand Prix.