Lewis Hamilton dismisses “BS” speculation over rift with Ferrari F1 race engineer

Lewis Hamilton was keen to end the “BS” speculation of a rift between he and Ferrari race engineer Riccardo Adami, stating that their relationship is “great”.

Tense moments of communication between Hamilton and Adami over the team radio have been broadcast on Formula 1’s world feed, with the seven-time world champion believing that he wasn’t receiving enough information about gaps on track in Monaco last weekend.

Furthermore, his end-of-race question asking if Adami was “upset with me or something” was not heard to have an answer. This has led to many commenters suggesting that Hamilton and Adami have not been getting on particularly well since joining forces at the start of the year.

But Hamilton asserted that this was simply “speculation” and that, although the two were still learning about working with each other, he and Adami had no real problems working together.

“Our relationship is great. No problems. We’re constantly learning more and more about each other,” said Hamilton ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend.

“We’re constantly adapting to the way both of us like to work. He’s worked with lots of different drivers before. We don’t have any problems whatsoever.”

Riccardo Adami, Ferrari Race Engineer

Photo by: Sutton Images

Hamilton explained that any disagreements heard over the broadcast were normal between an engineer and their driver – and that any further interpretation of that was “just noise”.

Adami has previously worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz at Ferrari, as well as Vettel, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Sebastien Buemi, and Daniel Ricciardo at Toro Rosso.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of speculation. Most of it is BS,” the Briton added. “Ultimately, we have a great relationship. He’s been amazing to work with. He’s a great guy, working so hard. We both are.

“And we don’t always get it right every weekend. Do we have disagreements? Like everyone does in relationships, but we work through them.

“We’re both in it together. We both want to win a championship together. We’re both working towards lifting the team up.

“It’s just all noise, and we don’t really pay any attention to it. It can continue if you want, but it doesn’t make any difference to the job that we’re trying to do.”

Hamilton also played down the radio traffic in Monaco specifically, stating that “there was areas that we just had radio problems through the race. I didn’t get all the information that I wanted, but we spoke afterwards”.