When Lewis Hamilton climbed out of his Ferrari in Barcelona to celebrate his first win for the Scuderia, the quiet figure he kept pulling into his hugs on the podium was not a designer or a team principal. It was Carlo Santi, the race engineer Ferrari only ever intended as a temporary fix — and who has since been dubbed Hamilton's "Italian Bono."
The 52-year-old from Verona was a stopgap. After Hamilton's difficult debut Ferrari season, the team moved Riccardo Adami — whose terse team radio with Hamilton had become a 2025 talking point — to oversee the Ferrari Driver Academy, and slotted Santi in for pre-season testing. He never left the seat. Santi's F1 record runs deep: he engineered Kimi Raikkonen to the Finn's 21st and final grand prix win at the 2018 United States Grand Prix before moving into a remote leadership role at Maranello.
Hamilton has been effusive about the partnership. "It was great to have him up there," he said of the podium, per Crash.net. "Him kind of substituting this year, jumping in and diving in deep with me, we didn't know each other, we'd never spoken... we met and I think got on straight away. It's great to be able to connect with an engineer."
He went further on what the bond has done for both of them. "I like to think that this has probably reignited the love that he has as being an engineer, as he has done for me as a driver," Hamilton said, noting that Santi is "very, very quiet" and finds it hard to express emotion.
Fred Vasseur was quick to spread the credit rather than crown one engineer. "I don't want to put Carlo in front or whatever," the Ferrari team principal said. "Carlo is part of the process and the fit between Carlo and Lewis is a good one. If we are getting results, it's because collectively we are doing a good job."
The wider question is whether the resurgence is more than a feel-good story. David Coulthard, who had openly doubted Hamilton during the lean spell, has changed his read. "I feel a mixture of absolute admiration and relief," Coulthard told Formula 1. "The relief is because it's not comfortable to question the quality of a driver like Lewis."
Coulthard now sees a title angle. "He's second in the World Championship, Mercedes have got reliability concerns, and that's only going to get worse as the year goes on, so could we be talking about someone who's in the hunt for the World Championship?" he said, reaching for a precedent: "Max came back from 100 points at this race and almost won it in Abu Dhabi." His verdict on Barcelona was blunt: "That was world-class."
The three voices don't fully line up — and that is the point. Hamilton credits the human connection with Santi for unlocking his form; Vasseur insists the gains are collective and won't single anyone out; Coulthard zooms out to the championship maths, where Mercedes fragility on Kimi Antonelli's car could open a door. What they share is the sense that the version of Hamilton who looked lost in red last year is gone.
Hamilton sits second in the standings behind Antonelli heading to the Austrian Grand Prix on June 26-28. The "Italian Bono" tag is a high bar — Peter Bonnington helped steer Hamilton to six of his seven titles. On Barcelona's evidence, Santi has at least restored the thing those numbers were built on.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/how-italian-bono-carlo-santi-sparked-hamiltons-ferrari-revival). Visit for full coverage.*