(Motorsport-Total.com) – According to Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion has found an “Italian Bono” in his race engineer Carlos Santi. After Friday in Monaco, the Ferrari driver recorded a best time in the second practice session.
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“The collaboration between driver and engineer is very, very important,” Hamilton emphasized on Media Thursday. “Last year, [Riccardo Adami] and I had a good relationship. He was a warm guy, and we worked quite well together.”
Nevertheless, the chemistry between the two never seemed as close from the outside as the relationship between Hamilton and his long-time Mercedes race engineer Peter “Bono” Bonnington.
“Learning a driver’s requirements and responding to them takes time,” Hamilton continued. “When you give an engineer feedback, they understand it through the balance in the corner and all the factors that can cause problems while driving.”
“You try to describe your problem, corner by corner, at the entry, in the middle, and at the exit. If you want, you can divide [the corner] into five sections. Sometimes the collaboration between driver and engineer works well, sometimes it doesn’t.”
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Hamilton also emphasized: “It feels to me like Carlos is my Italian Bono. I told Bono that recently too. Let’s put it this way: He’s old school.”
“An older guy with a lot of experience. He’s very level-headed, you can hear that on the radio. That’s exactly what allows us to go so deep into detail together. I also think our understanding of the technical side is something that can really be seen.”
Despite the positive collaboration, Santi will not act as race engineer at every race. Due to other commitments, Cedric Michel-Grosjean will take over Santi’s role from time to time.
This season, Hamilton has already secured two podium finishes for the Scuderia. In the Drivers’ World Championship, the most successful Formula 1 driver of all time is in fourth place, three points behind his teammate Charles Leclerc.
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