New race engineer for Raikkonen amid Ferrari reshuffle

Ferrari is set to announce that Carlo Santi will take over as race engineer for Kimi Raikkonen in 2018.

Although the appointment isn't yet official, Santi's new role has been reported by Motorsport.com.

Santi had previously acted as the Finn's data engineer in 2017. It's in line with technical chief Mattia Binotto's policy of promoting from within rather than talent hunting from other teams.

Choosing someone who already has a working relationship with Raikkonen is also a boost given that there are only six weeks until the first pre-season test session at the Circuit de Catalunya-Barcelona.

Santi replaces David Greenwood, whose departure from Maranello was announced last week. The British engineer is believed to be joining Manor Racing's World Endurance Championship LMP1 programme.

Kimi Raikkonen's race engineer leaves Ferrari

Ferrari is likely to make a number of other personnel changes before the start of the season.

The team's head of track operations Diego Ioverno is likely to assume a new role. Many of his former duties are expected to be taken over by engineering chief Jock Clear.

Claudio Albertini will also take an operation role. Last year he was the chief liaison with Ferrari's engine customer teams, Haas F1 and Sauber.

Maranello veteran Christian Corradini is understood to be taking on the role of chief mechanic.

On Wednesday it was announced that Carlos Sainz' former race engineer Marco Matassa was leaving Toro Rosso to join Ferrari. He'll be working alongside Massimo Rivola on the Scuderia's young driver programme.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.