Lewis Hamilton has praised his Ferrari race engineer Carlo Santi, comparing the connection he has built with the Italian to the one he famously had with his long-time Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington.
Hamilton secured his first race victory with Ferrari at Sunday's Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix as team and driver executed a well-judged three-stop strategy to beat the dominant Mercedes drivers.
The win follows two consecutive second-place finishes for Hamilton as the seven-time world champion has started to deliver on the promise that surrounded his move to Ferrari at the start of last year and emerge as a title contender.
Hamilton has spoken about numerous changes within the team to help him feel more comfortable this year, with Santi's arrival as his race engineer among the more obvious ones to the outside world.
In 2025, Riccardo Adami engineered Hamilton throughout the season, but the pair struggled to gel, resulting in multiple awkward exchanges over team radio.
In January this year, Ferrari confirmed Adami would leave his position and during preseason testing it emerged that Santi had taken over the position, although he was initially named as an interim replacement.
Santi, who previously worked as a performance and race engineer for Kimi Raikkonen, had been in a factory-based role when Hamilton joined the team in 2025 and was not a regular at races.
Speaking after his win on Sunday, Hamilton said he had finally found a connection with an engineer similar to the one he had with Bonnington, who was a key factor in six of the British driver's seven championships.
"It was great to have him up there [on the podium]," Hamilton said of Santi. "I think, you know, him kind of substituting this year, jumping in and diving in deep with me, we didn't know each other, we'd never spoken and I didn't know anything about him.
"And we met and I think got on straight away -- it's great to be able to connect with an engineer other than what I used to have. You know, I had it for such a long time and then you kind of lose that feeling because Bono's now doing it with Kimi [Antonelli].
"It's really great to be able to share that experience with him on that stage, and also probably, like, he's very, very quiet."
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Hamilton also hopes he has helped Santi, 52, rediscover some of his passion for working trackside for Ferrari in F1.
"You could tell it's hard for him to express his emotions. He's just smiley and, you know, I'm giving him these big hugs and pulling him in, saying thank you.
"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."
Team principal Fred Vasseur acknowledged the strength of Hamilton's relationship with Santi, but was keen to play down the role of any single individual in Ferrari's first win since October 2024.
"I don't want to put Carlo in front or whatever," Vasseur said. "I think it's a huge effort from everybody. Carlo is part of the process and the fit between Carlo and Lewis is a good one.
"We have to react as a group in the good and the bad moments. When it's a bad moment, I'm trying to protect the team and to take the blame for myself.
"Today, I don't want to put a department or someone in front. If we are getting results, it's because collectively we are doing a good job."