Lewis Hamilton’s long-serving race engineer Peter Bonnington will not follow him to Ferrari after accepting a promotion at Mercedes.
Bonnington, who has been Hamilton’s race engineer since the driver joined Mercedes in 2013, has been named head of race engineering at the team.
He will continue to serve as Hamilton’s race engineer for the rest of the year. Bonnington will also serve as a race engineer again in 2025. Hamilton confirmed before the season began he will move to Ferrari next year.
Hamilton and Bonnington formed the most successful partnership between a driver and race engineer in Formula 1 history. They have taken 84 race victories between them over their 11-and-a-half years together.
Hamilton won the world championship six times with Mercedes. However, as Bonnington was unable to attend the Mexican Grand Prix for medical reasons in 2019, he was not present when Hamilton won the title that year. Marcus Dudley substituted for him.
The pair scored their first victory together at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2013 and won at least one race every year until 2022, when Mercedes suffered a slump in form as F1 introduced new technical regulations. That win-less spell lasted two-and-a-half years until Hamilton claimed victory at the British Grand Prix last month. He and Bonnington took another win three weeks later in Belgium, but finished second on the road to team mate George Russell, who was later disqualified.
Before working with Hamilton, Bonnington was race engineer to Michael Schumacher. He has therefore worked with the only two seven-times world champions in F1 history.
Mercedes is yet to confirm its driver line-up and engineer arrangements for next season. It is widely expected to promote Andrea Kimi Antonelli from Formula 2 to serve as team mate to Russell, whose race engineer is currently Dudley.
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