Martin Brundle hasn’t exactly been shocked by Ferrari moving Riccardo Adami out of Lewis Hamilton’s ear — he’s been more surprised it took the Scuderia this long to do it.
Ferrari has confirmed Adami has taken on a new role within the organisation, effectively ending a partnership that never quite sounded comfortable across Hamilton’s first season in red. The new race engineer hasn’t been formally announced yet, but Charles Leclerc’s engineer Bryan Bozzi is understood to be working with both drivers during the first pre-season shakedown running in Barcelona next week.
For Brundle, the logic is simple: Hamilton’s best seasons have tended to come when the cockpit and pitwall are speaking the same language — not just English, but the specific shorthand that develops between a driver and the person translating sensations into lap time.
He pointed to the “Lewis-speak” factor: the way Hamilton describes balance, grip and what the car is doing mid-corner, and how quickly the other end of the radio can interpret that into actionable changes.
“Surprised it probably didn’t happen a bit earlier, really, judging by all the things that were going on last year,” Brundle told Sky Sports News at the Autosport Awards.
“Something I said on Sky F1 is Lewis needs to go there with a team, so at least they understood ‘Lewis-speak’ when he’s inside the car, what it all means and to interpret what Lewis really needs behind the wheel.
“I think he needed some help to really flourish there quickly.”
It’s an interesting framing because it cuts through the easy narrative that tense radio clips always equal a broken relationship. The reality is more mundane — and, in a top team, more brutal. If the communication loop isn’t accelerating performance, it gets changed. Hamilton’s partnership with Peter Bonnington at Mercedes set a gold standard not because it was cosy, but because it was ruthlessly efficient: clear instruction, clear feedback, and a shared sense of when to push and when to pivot.
At Ferrari in 2025, there were enough terse exchanges over the radio to make it obvious the rhythm wasn’t right. Even allowing for the way teams can “varnish” a public-facing story — Brundle’s word, and a pointed one — those moments hinted at a driver and engineer still negotiating how to work together while the sport around them didn’t pause to wait.
Brundle’s line that “something needed to change” will resonate in a paddock that’s increasingly alive to how fine the margins are in modern F1. You can turn up with the fastest car and still bleed lap time through indecision, misinterpretation, or a lack of trust in the heat of a race. And for Hamilton, heading into 2026 with a new set of regulations and a new Ferrari, the last thing he needs is another bedding-in period on the radio.
Ferrari’s immediate focus is practical: getting miles on the board and starting the feedback loop early. The team will unveil its 2026 challenger, the SF-26, on Friday 23 January, before Hamilton and Leclerc head to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for shakedown running from January 26 to 30.
Who ends up as Hamilton’s dedicated engineer — and whether it’s someone already fluent in his way of working — will be one of the more revealing details of Ferrari’s winter. Not because it changes the car’s inherent pace, but because it speaks to whether Ferrari is prepared to build its operational choices around Hamilton as aggressively as it has built the narrative around signing him in the first place.
As Brundle put it, the radio and the performances told their own story last year. Ferrari has now accepted it, and the next voice Hamilton hears when he asks for “a little more front” might matter more than most people want to admit.
