Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has played down the impending change of Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer, insisting that such a switch isn’t of massive effect to the driver. This comes after it was confirmed that Riccardo Adami would be replaced a few races into the season, something that Hamilton admitted would be “detrimental”.
In his second year at Maranello, the seven-time champion will have to adapt to yet another change after arriving at the Italian squad from Mercedes. With Adami now due to be assigned to another role, Carlo Santi has been brought in to replace him temporarily.
“It’s only going to be a few races, so early on into the season, it’s going to all be switching up again and I’ll have to learn to work with someone new,” Hamilton told the media. “So that’s detrimental to me too.”
Now, Vasseur has confronted questions regarding this change as he asked the media to stop running with the story.
“It’s not exactly the discussion that we had,” the Frenchman said when asked about Hamilton’s comments on the change. “I think the collaboration between the team and Lewis and the pitwall is very good. But I saw Lewis, not that the team was not committed, but in confidence and very open about the relationship. And my feeling is very positive with this. And we will continue to improve.
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
Photo by: Marcel van Dorst / EYE4images / NurPhoto via Getty Images
“The mindset is to try to do a better job tomorrow than today. We know that if we have areas where we can improve, we will continue to push in this direction. But Lewis was in a very good mindset on this.”
Unsurprisingly, he was pushed further on this.
“Please stop with this story,” he asked. “You have 22 cars, you have six or seven new engineers each year, and the same as the team principals, and probably the oldest one is Toto, 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 pitwall is leading a team of six people working on the car. It’s not a matter of individuals in F1, it’s always about the team, it’s never about the individuals.”
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