F1 | Bono, no Ferrari: stays in Mercedes with promotion

Peter Bonnington will not follow Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari. Instead, he will remain at Mercedes to take up a new role starting in 2025.

From next Formula 1 season, the current race engineer of the seven-time world champion will be promoted to head of race engineering at Mercedes, but from Zandvoort onwards he will occupy the new role alongside his ordinary role alongside Hamilton.

Confirming “Bono’s” promotion was a Mercedes spokesperson, who also added that next year the 49-year-old will also be the race engineer for one of Mercedes’ two drivers next season.

Motorsport.com can anticipate that Bono is set to become the race engineer for the driver who will replace the departing Lewis Hamilton. Andrea Kimi Antonelli is still the favorite to win the 2025 seat.

Bonnington has been Hamilton’s race engineer since 2013, the first season Hamilton arrived at Brackley after his fruitful stint at McLaren. Since then the pair have gone on to win six world titles and the partnership will end at the end of this season, with Lewis’ move to Ferrari.

Hamilton, however, will find in Ferrari some familiar faces with whom he has had to deal in his decade-plus as a Mercedes driver. We are talking about Loic Serra, who will join the Scuderia from Maranello as head of chassis performance engineering starting in October. In addition to Serra, he will also find Jock Clear, with whom he worked in the first 2 years at Mercedes.