Former Ferrari and Williams man Rob Smedley believes long-standing Mercedes race engineer Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington is right not to follow Lewis Hamilton to the Scuderia.
While speculation swirled that Bono might join Hamilton after the seven-time world champion’s move to Maranello, Smedley sees remaining at Mercedes as the smarter choice for the Briton’s career stability.
Bonnington has been Hamilton’s trusted race engineer for nearly 12 years, guiding the seven-time world champion’s efforts through thick and thin on race weekends.
A move to the House of Maranello in a bid to perpetuate at the Italian outfit the pair’s massively successful working relationship seemed like a given when Hamilton announced his new venture. But in the end, it will not come to pass.
Last August, Mercedes further solidified Bonnington’s future with the Bracekley squad by promoting him to Head of Race Engineering, ending the speculation.
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Smedley, who understands the unique bond between driver and engineer firsthand, having worked closely with Felipe Massa at both Ferrari and Williams, believes that Bono made the right call, noting that hitching your wagon too tightly to a single driver can be risky.
“A driver like Lewis chooses your team. When a seven-times World Champion chooses your team to come and work at your team, I don’t think he needs to bring like an entourage with him,” Smedley explained, speaking as a guest on the Formula For Success podcast.
“And I always spoke about this publicly, both for Lewis himself, I think, but also for people like Bono, I think that’s quite a dangerous game to play to kind of follow the driver around.
“Because if the driver falls out of favour or the driver decides that after one year this is not for him, you know, he can’t take the entourage with him. So I think that Lewis has done the right thing.
“He’d obviously have ‘Team LH’ around him, his management and trainers and people like that, but, but I think trying to take engineers would have been a bit of a misstep.”
While Hamilton will reunite with a few familiar faces at Ferrari, such as former Mercedes performance director Loic Serra and former assistant team manager Jerome d’Ambrosio, Smedley suggests that the 39-year-ild F1 veteran must focus on embracing Ferrari’s culture, which will allow him to succeed without needing his entire team to follow him.
“The team will embrace him,” Smedley said, confident that Ferrari will rally around Hamilton’s talent.
“I think that if you go there with a bit of a reputation like what Lewis has got for being able to deliver, the team will get around him. The team will definitely get around him.
“Then Lewis has got to do his part as well in endearing himself and embracing the culture of the team, and not like being on the periphery of that. And if he can do that, they will love him. Honestly, he will walk on water.
“I think the team will now feel they’ll just be able to raise their game by another one or two per cent because they’ll feel that confidence, right?
“This is a seven-times World Champion coming into your team, having chosen your team over, effectively, a team he’s been at for, let’s call it, all of his life if you take the engine part of it, suddenly he’s walking away from all of that and all of that legacy, and he’s choosing you guys.
“That gives you a massive boost of confidence. And if everybody works that half 1% harder or smarter, then you know, great things can happen.”
In the end, Smedley believes that both Hamilton and Bonnington made the right choices. Bonnington will enjoy a secure, elevated role at Mercedes, while Hamilton will gain Ferrari’s full support as he steps into his new chapter.
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