Mercedes Retains Bono & Elevates Him to Head of Race Engineering
Aug.22 - Mercedes may be losing Lewis Hamilton, but his race engineer Peter 'Bono' Bonnington will not be following the seven time world champion to Ferrari.
A Mercedes spokesman confirmed reports that Bonnington, who was Hamilton's race engineer throughout almost his entire decade-long career at the team, is staying put.
49-year-old Bonnington will remain a race engineer in 2025 and beyond, but he will also be elevated to a higher position at the same time - as head of race engineering.
As for Hamilton, the simplest solution for Ferrari would simply be to assign Carlos Sainz's current race engineer, Riccardo Adami, to the team's new driver for 2025 and beyond.
But Jock Clear, a famous F1 race engineer who worked extensively with 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve, is also now at Ferrari - as head of the driver academy.
"If he (Hamilton) ended up working with Jock Clear, who he's won with before, that would be an easy ball to get rolling," Villeneuve told Prime Casino, referring to the fact that Clear worked on Hamilton's engineering team in 2013 and 2014 before the Briton left for Maranello.
However, Villeneuve said no longer working with Bonnington next year is a minor 'blow' for 39-year-old Hamilton.
"Yeah, but even an engineer moving team needs to figure out how things work," he said. "He (Hamilton) has won with different engineers. He's won championships with different engineers. It will also depend on who he gets at Ferrari.
"But it's a paramount relationship because this is the one point of contact and trust for the driver and vice versa. This relationship is something that is built over time and sometimes it just never works out.
"You can have the best engineer with the best driver and it won't work out - the chemistry won't happen, that trust level won't get into place, and you'll never get the results," Villeneuve said.
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Nothing new as race engineers generally don't follow drivers like personal trainers (except for Pyry Salmela in the recent past), & even Rob Smedley, Andrea Stella, & Ayao Komatsu didn't change teams simultaneously to continue a driver-engineer partnership, so partly coincidental moves.
Ricardo Adami will, of course, become Hamilton's race engineer just like he became Sainz's following Seb's departure & likewise, Bono will become Antonelli's race engineer, as drivers tend to receive the same people, i.e., race engineer & mechanics as the direct predecessor using the same garage side, so a standard approach in all teams.