Ferrari has made a dramatic change to Lewis Hamilton's technical team, removing Riccardo Adami as the seven-time champion's race engineer just one week before the launch of their 2026 car.
A Partnership That Failed to Gel
The Scuderia confirmed the move on Monday, 19 January 2026, ending a difficult first-year partnership between Hamilton and Adami. The Italian engineer, who previously worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz at Ferrari, has been reassigned to a role within the Ferrari Driver Academy and their Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) programme.
The decision follows a season plagued by miscommunication, with tense and confused radio exchanges between driver and engineer becoming a regular feature of race weekends in 2025. Hamilton endured a chastening debut year with the famous team, failing to secure a single podium finish. Seeking a fresh start, the Briton has opted for a new 'man-in-his-ear' for the crucial 2026 campaign.
Who is Luca Diella?
According to reports from the Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport, the current frontrunner to step into the high-pressure role is Luca Diella, Hamilton's current performance engineer at Ferrari.
Diella is a familiar face from Hamilton's dominant era at Mercedes. He joined the Brackley-based team in 2019 as a performance engineer focused on power unit optimisation. He then moved into Hamilton's garage at the start of the 2021 season, serving as the driver's trackside performance engineer for four seasons, including the controversial title decider in Abu Dhabi that year.
He followed Hamilton to Maranello ahead of the 2025 season, initially working with the test team before being promoted to Hamilton's race garage in July, prior to the Belgian Grand Prix. Hamilton acknowledged the mid-season switch at the time, stating Diella was "someone that I've known for years" from Mercedes, but admitted they had to learn to work together "super, super quick."
Prior to his F1 career, Diella was a development engineer at Cosworth on the Aston Martin Valkyrie project and served as team principal for Brunel University's Formula Student programme, from which he holds a Masters in Motorsport Engineering.
Precedent and Pre-Season Pressure
Should Diella get the nod, it would mirror a successful change made for Hamilton's teammate, Charles Leclerc. In 2024, Leclerc's performance engineer, Bryan Bozzi, replaced the departing Xavi Marcos as his race engineer, a move that solidified their working relationship.
The timing adds significant pressure, with the first race of the 2026 season, the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, just seven weeks away on 8 March. Ferrari will unveil their new car's livery on Friday, 23 January, with pre-season testing in Barcelona scheduled for the following week.
Meanwhile, any hopes of a reunion with Hamilton's legendary Mercedes race engineer, Peter "Bono" Bonnington, appear futile. Bonnington received a promotion at Mercedes last year to head of trackside performance and is now also race engineer for Hamilton's replacement, the Italian prodigy Kimi Antonelli.
All eyes will now be on Maranello to see if promoting the trusted Diella can provide the clear communication Hamilton needs to resurrect his Ferrari career.
