Lewis Hamilton finally stood atop the podium for the first time in Ferrari colors last weekend after winning the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.
The result marked a major turnaround for the seven-time world champion, who endured his worst season in Formula 1 after joining the Scuderia at the start of 2025 when he struggled to adapt to the team’s SF-25 car.
since then, Hamilton He built an engineering team around him which allowed him to extract the most out of it FerrariThe 2026 competition, the SF-26, is a car that the Briton co-developed last year and over the winter.
Equally important, Hamilton has established a strong working relationship with Carlo Santi, his new race engineer. But who is the man he describes as “the Italian Bono”?
Who is Carlo Santi?
Carlo Santi is 52 years old and was born in Verona, northern Italy. He spent more than a decade at Ferrari’s Formula 1 team, working closely with Kimi Raikkonen during the 2016 and 2017 seasons, before becoming the Finn’s race engineer in 2018.
This culminated in him standing alongside Raikkonen on the podium for his final Formula 1 win at the 2018 US Grand Prix, before Santi moved into a leadership role over the following years at Ferrari, working inside the ‘remote garage’, helping to support the drivers and team on race weekends from the back at their Maranello headquarters.
Santi said working for Ferrari had been a dream of his since he was a boy – and even after joining the company, it took him a long time to work in the Formula 1 operation.
“Since I was young, working at Scuderia has been my ultimate goal,” he told Ferrari’s official website last year. “However, the path that led me here was not easy.”
“After graduating in Mechanical Engineering, specializing in Land Vehicles at Milan Polytechnic, I accepted a scholarship for a project at the Fiat Research Center in Turin, after which I joined the Vehicle Dynamics Department.
“I made my racing debut five years later, when I joined the endurance racing team as a performance engineer. After that, I finally joined Scuderia as a model engineer for the first driving simulator that was then in development.
“Fifteen years later, after working in driving simulation, vehicle dynamics, race engineering and car performance, I’m still here, suffering when things don’t go well and rejoicing after every win.”
That was last year, but Hamilton’s struggles during his first season with Ferrari in 2025 meant the seven-time champion was looking to make a change from original race engineer Riccardo Adami, and it was Santi who stepped up at the start of this season.
Speaking about the change, Hamilton said back in February: “Firstly, with Ricciardo it was a very difficult decision to make, and I’m really very grateful for all the efforts he made last year, his patience – it’s been a difficult year for all of us.”
Although Santi’s new role was initially meant to be temporary, the pair have established a strong working relationship that has helped Hamilton secure wins and second places in the last three grands prix.
“Italian Bono”
Santi’s relationship with Hamilton has already drawn comparisons with that of Peter “Bono” Bonnington, who was Hamilton’s race engineer throughout his decade-long stint at Mercedes.
The pair won six drivers’ titles together before Hamilton departed at the end of 2024, with Bonnington then taking on the same race engineer role to replace Hamilton. Kimi Antonelli. Bonnington has since helped guide the Italian teenager to five wins in seven races, as well as the race lead Drivers Ranking.
“Having that collaboration between driver and engineer, it’s hit and miss sometimes,” Hamilton said before the Monaco Grand Prix earlier this month. “Bono and I achieved the goal [off] Right from the beginning. He had a good working relationship with Michael [Schumacher, who Bonnington engineered briefly before Hamilton at Mercedes].
“I feel like Carlo is like the ‘Italian Bono.’ I told Bono that the other day – in that he is [Santi] It is a bit of an OG.
“He’s an older gentleman who’s been around the building. He’s very quiet. These are details we were able to go through together. I think our understanding of the engineering side is something worth remembering.”
“It’s so cool”
Now just 41 points behind Antonelli in the championship, Hamilton has demonstrated what makes a powerful race engineer so dynamic.
“The driver and engineer working together is very important,” he said. “I think last year, I had a good relationship with Adami. He’s a nice guy. We worked together relatively well.
“But I think meeting a driver’s needs takes time to learn. When you give feedback to engineers, they understand balance through corners. They understand all the elements that contribute to the difficulties you have. When you try to describe the problem you have, corner by corner, entry, middle, exit, or you can break it down into five sections if you want.”
After racing to second place in the Canadian Grand Prix last month, Hamilton heaped praise on Santi.
“I chose a different setup this weekend, just encrypting the data, and working really well with my engineer – he’s absolutely brilliant and I really love working with him,” he said.
“The second guy did a great job this weekend, really helped me get more performance out of the car, get into a much better place, and I was able to attack all the corners finally.
“Like I said, there are a lot of changes I had to ask for, both me and Fred [Vasseur, Ferrari Team Principal] He was very supportive, and again, I also moved mountains in order to feel comfortable. It’s finally starting to show in my game, so thanks to the team.
Hamilton said that during pre-season testing Santi’s role will only be temporary But considering how well they work together, it looks like they’re ready to continue as a couple for now.
Time will tell whether the seven-time champion and ‘Italian Bono’ will have more to celebrate in the coming weeks and months, following their first win together in Barcelona.
