Rob Smedley calls out Lewis Hamilton race engineer trait that “pains” him

Former Ferrari Formula 1 race engineer Rob Smedley has given his take on Lewis Hamilton’s struggles to adapt with a engineer since joining the team.

Ferrari confirmed in January that Hamilton would get a new race engineer for his second season with the Italian team, with Riccardo Adami shifted into another role in the organisation.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton admitted Ferrari’s failure to appoint a new permanent race engineer ahead of the 2026 F1 season will be “detrimental” to his sophomore campaign with the team.

Hamilton is currently working with Carlo Santi, who previously engineered Kimi Raikkonen at Ferrari, on a temporary basis.

Smedley has criticised a trait of Adami from Hamilton’s troubled debut season in red, and referred to when the 41-year-old Briton sarcastically told his team to “have a tea break while you’re at it” amid slow decision-making regarding team orders.

"If those kinds of comments are happening on the radio, the relationship isn’t fully formed yet, and that’s where it can become unhealthy. It’s a clear sign that frustrations are boiling over,” Smedly told the High Performance podcast.

"By the way, it is the job of the race engineer to know enough about the car and be across their work so that when the driver asks a question, you can answer quickly. It pains me when I hear 'we’ll get back to you.' This isn’t a call centre.

"The driver is trying to perform at 10/10 while driving at 200mph. Answer him and give him confidence. If you respond like you need to go ask someone else, those tiny moments erode trust, and the relationship becomes tense.

"The Ferrari engineer in question has had a long and successful career, and he was recommended to Lewis by Sebastian Vettel. He had a great relationship and a lot of success with Sebastian. But sometimes it’s like my story with Felipe in 2006: if it doesn’t gel, it doesn’t work.”

Smedly, who worked with Felipe Massa at Ferrari, added: "From what I know of other sports like football and rugby, it’s always about a 50/50 split when you work with athletes.

“In a Formula 1 team, the race engineer is effectively the head coach for that driver, so you can’t turn up with no idea about the technical side of the job.

"It’s really important that you understand how the car works, how the driver interacts with the vehicle, and how you optimise that whole package.

“But if you don’t understand that there’s a human being in the car - an athlete with all the flaws that we 'mere mortals' have - then it’s never going to work.”

What is Ferrari’s take on the situation?

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said Hamilton’s outlook was different when they discussed things together.

“It’s not exactly the discussion that we had,” he said. “I think the collaboration between the team and Lewis on the pit wall is very good.

“It’s not that he was not committed, but [is high] in confidence and very open to the relationship.

“My feeling is very positive with this and we will continue to improve. The mindset is to try to do a better job tomorrow than today.

“I think that if we have areas where we can improve, I will continue to push in this direction, but Lewis is in a very good mindset.”

When pressed further, Vasseur urged the media to “please stop with this story". 

“If you go into the paddock of 22 cars, you have approximately six or seven new engineers each year and the same with the team principals," Vasseur continued. 

“I’m probably the oldest [longest-serving] one with Toto [Wolff]. You are changing three or four team principals each year and it’s not the end of the team.

“The team today is something like 1,500 people. It’s not about one race engineer.

“The guy that you see on the pit wall is leading a team of people working on the car and it’s not a matter of individuals.

“In F1, it’s always about the team. It’s never about an individual.”