Pete Bonnington’s future remains with Mercedes, as Lewis Hamilton’s current race engineer has been promoted ahead of the F1 2025 season.
With Hamilton departing Mercedes for Ferrari at the end of the 2024 campaign, bringing to an end the most successful driver/team partnership in F1’s history, the big question was whether or not his race engineer Pete ‘Bono’ Bonnington would follow him across to the Scuderia.
Mercedes promotion for Pete Bonnington
While Hamilton makes the switch to Ferrari in 2025, he won’t be joined by his long-time race engineer as Bonnington has committed his future to Mercedes.
Having been Hamilton’s race engineer for the past 12 years, a tenure that includes winning six Drivers’ Championships and seven Constructors’ titles, Bonnington has been promoted to a new role as head of race engineering.
While the promotion is with immediate effect, he’ll continue to oversee Hamilton for the rest of the F1 2024 season as he transitions into his new role.
Alongside his role as head of race engineering, he’ll continue to engineer one of Mercedes’ drivers in 2025 as the team seeks to capitalise upon his experience – Bonnington’s history with Brackley stems back as far as 2006 with Honda, initially working as an understudy to Andrew Shovlin and working on Jenson Button’s side of the garage before the team’s transition to Brawn GP and subsequent takeover by Mercedes.
It’s a very similar move to the arrangement Red Bull worked out with Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase who, in 2022, was promoted to head of race engineering to succeed Guillaume ‘Rocky’ Rocquelin while also continuing to work as the Dutch driver’s race engineer – roles he still retains.
Bonnington, like Lambiase, has become one of the most highly recognised race engineers in Formula 1, having worked with Michael Schumacher before being assigned to Hamilton’s car when the former McLaren driver switched teams after 2012.
It’s Bonnington’s voice that became closely associated with the years of Hamilton’s successes with Mercedes, with his calm announcements like ‘OK Lewis, it’s Hammertime’ becoming synonymous with the British driver’s dominance.
Bonnington staying with Mercedes was never in much doubt – not only does his relationship with the team stem back almost two decades, but Hamilton is known to have an ‘anti-poaching’ clause in his deal which prevented him from approaching direct colleagues for roles at his new home.
More on Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes
But, with the finer details needing to be worked out, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff revealed back in February that conversations between Mercedes and Bonnington would be held to figure out the path forward.
“I think this is a discussion which everyone needs to have in the months to come,” Wolff told media, including PlanetF1.com, following the announcement of Hamilton’s departure to Ferrari.
“And as much as I’ve spoken with Bono already, when I told him [about Hamilton’s move] he said, ‘Is it April the first?’ That’s something which we will discuss in the future.”
As for Hamilton, his fresh start at Ferrari will thus have a new dynamic as he and a new race engineer work together. The incumbent race engineer for the car Hamilton will take over from Carlos Sainz is Riccardo Adami, also a former race engineer for Sebastian Vettel, with Ferrari understood to be keen to appoint an engineer familiar with the team to work with Hamilton.
Hamilton’s successor at Mercedes is yet to be confirmed, with current Formula 2 star and Mercedes junior Kimi Antonelli the leading contender as he has carried out extensive testing of previous cars (TPC) with the team’s 2022 W13, including a recent day at Spa-Francorchamps.