How a bad Ferrari ruined the relationship between Lewis Hamilton and Riccardo Adami

While it was clear that the seven-time Formula 1 Champion could not get his head around driving Ferrari's 2025 single-seater, his tense relationship with Adami was clear to the world through the numerous awkward radio moments that were shared over the live TV.

Entering his second season with Ferrari, Hamilton now has a new race engineer (Carlos Santi), although on an interim basis, and he seems happier with the car, which has reflected in much better performances so far.

Former Ferrari performance engineer and driver coach to Charles Leclerc, Jock Clear, touched on the importance of the relationship between an F1 driver and his race engineer.

He said: "A good relationship between the driver and race engineer is hugely important, not so much from the technical point of view.

It's a very difficult role to explain in terms of what the skill sets need to be. At various different times the skill sets actually need to be quite different.

"The race engineer is pretty much doing an engineering job within the race engineering department within the development of the car. He is using all the knowledge he's learned over the years about how vehicles work and how performance is generated.

"Then come the race weekends, and when he's dealing with the driver, he has to sort of balance that hat, that very high level of engineering expertise, with the golfer's caddy role, where you really are giving the driver confidence in what's going on, making him feel like he's got everything under control; giving him the information he needs and not saturating him with information he doesn't need, and that's quite a difficult balancing act," he explained.

Discussing the details of the relationship between Hamilton and Adami, Clear claims the problem was not only the lack of chemistry between the pair but also the messed-up situation fueled by a bad Ferrari single-seater.

Clear said: "I know Ricci [Adami] was as frustrated as anybody last year. It was a difficult year for Ferrari; it was a difficult year for Lewis. Maybe just to have a sort of clean sheet of paper this time round has given him a new lease of life.

"Much of it is down to the car and the fact that he's enjoying a car that he can get to grips with. Lewis has just been more comfortable in the car.

"That's made things much easier for the team generally, not just for his race engineer but for Fred [Vasseur] and Matteo [Togninalli, Head of Track Engineering] as well, who are dealing with Lewis day in, day out," he concluded. (Source: Ignition Casino)