Lewis Hamilton addresses Ferrari engineer frustration after “leave it to me” request

Lewis Hamilton has praised Ferrari F1 race engineer Riccardo Adami after their first race together at the Australian Grand Prix.

For the first time since 2012, Lewis Hamilton is racing in F1 without Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington, who has remained at Mercedes following the seven-time world champion's switch to Ferrari.

Adami worked with Sebastian Vettel during his six years at Ferrari and was Carlos Sainz’s race engineer.

Hamilton and Adami’s early relationship was tested over the weekend at the season-opener in Melbourne.

On several occasions during the race, Hamilton voiced his frustration when given instructions by Adami.

“Leave me to it, please”, Hamilton told Adami after the Ferrari engineer recommended different engine switches to aid his chances of overtaking Alex Albon.

However, despite appearing frustrated during the race, Hamilton said that Adami “did a really good job”.

“I think Riccardo did a really good job. We’re learning about each other bit by bit,” Hamilton said as quoted by Sky.

“After this we’ll download, we’ll go through all the comments - things I said and vice versa.

“Generally, I’m not one that likes a lot of information in-race, unless I ask for it. He did his best today and we’ll move forward.” 

Vasseur confident Ferrari will “learn” from Australia

It was a disappointing weekend for Ferrari in Australia as they came away with just eighth and 10th.

Not only did they lack outright speed, their decision to keep Hamilton and Charles Leclerc out in wet conditions on dry tyres ruined their chances of a good result. 

Team boss Frederic Vasseur admitted it wasn’t a “clean” weekend on the pit wall for Ferrari.

“It’s the first race, the first time that we have to communicate between the pit wall and the car,” Vasseur said.

“I thought that we can do a better job and to know each other a bit more. For sure it was not a clean one at all, but the strategy was difficult.

“We need to find a better way to communicate between the car and the pit wall, but we will learn from race one and it’s not an issue.”