Hamilton's Response After Learning His Engineer Will Definitely Not Follow To Ferrari
F1Thursday, 22 August 2024 at 18:00
Lewis Hamilton addressed the recent announcement of Peter 'Bono' Bonnington's (his race engineer) stay and promotion within Mercedes.
Peter Bonnington has been a race engineer to the seven-time World Champion ever since the British driver joined Mercedes in 2013.
2024 is their 12th and final season together. Ever since they partnered in 2013, the Bonnington with Hamilton and Mercedes have achieved incredible success- six Drivers' and eight Constructors' titles.
However, this came to an end when the 39-year-old decided it was time for him to change teams and fulfill his childhood dream of racing for Ferrari.
Bonnigton could still follow him to Maranello, and it wasn't clear whether he would, but a few days ahead of the 2024 Dutch Grand Prix weekend, Mercedes announced Bonnigton's promotion (to Head of race engineering) and that he would be staying with his current team.
What was the seven-time World Champion's reaction? Asked how he felt about his engineer's decision, he told the media at Circuit Zandvoort:
"We have a great relationship and so you heard in the civil, he's like a brother. But I'm really, really, really happy for him."
"For me, I think it's just about people doing what's best to do whatever's best for you, packing up and leaving, and I can only imagine it's not him and his partner, and it affects. It impacts both of them. So they had to do whatever is right for him."
Hamilton admitted he knew it wasn't very likely that Bono would follow him to Ferrari. While he will surely miss his engineer, he added he was super happy for him.
"I knew it would be like an unlikely scenario that he would go with me because it's such a drastic change."
"I'm really happy, firstly, the team have acknowledged and made changes to this pathway within the team so you can grow more with it."
"I think you'll now be able to show them even more of the great things that he can do. But either way, we're going to be family forever."
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