Lewis Hamilton endured a difficult weekend at the Belgian Grand Prix, failing to advance beyond Q1 in qualifying. His Ferrari race engineer, Riccardo Adami, faced criticism over his handling of the situation. Hamilton’s struggles included two early qualifying exits during the Formula 1 Sprint weekend at Spa-Francorchamps.
After finishing a disappointing 15th in Saturday’s sprint race, things went from bad to worse in qualifying. Although Hamilton posted a fast time in Q1, it was deleted due to a track limits violation at the Raidillon corner. As a result, he didn’t make it to Q2 and ended up 16th overall. To cap off the weekend, Ferrari announced shortly before Sunday’s race that Hamilton would start from the pit lane.
Speaking over the radio, race engineer Adami seemed to display little compassion in the aftermath. When Hamilton enquired airwaves: “Is everything okay?” following his qualifying attempt, he received a curt response. “Track limits at turn four,” came the blunt reply.
After Hamilton questioned whether this meant he had been eliminated from Q1, the Italian responded: “Yeah. Lap time is deleted. P16.” Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz highlighted Adami’s approach to that conversation as he discussed what had happened on his Ted’s Notebook programme.
He suggested that Hamilton’s previous engineer at Mercedes, Peter Bonnington, would have managed the situation with greater sensitivity. ‘Bono’ worked with the Brit for more than a decade and the pair had a strong rapport, which is something Hamilton has yet to find with Adami.
Did you think it was a bit terse on the radio between him and Riccardo Adami, saying, ‘Is there something wrong?” Kravitz said. “I don’t know whether I expected a bit more empathy. To say, ‘Ah, I’m sorry, Lewis. Bad luck, mate. You’re out, hard one by, pal.’ The kind of things Bono would have said.”
Hamilton, 40, made no effort to hide his frustration afterwards, offering an apology to both his team and supporters as his difficult 2025 campaign rolls on. I’m just really sorry to the team,” he said. “Hard work with the filming day that we did, and all the preparation, and then you come here and don’t make it through Q1. It’s unacceptable. Really sorry.”
It is far from the first time the relationship between Hamilton and Adami has been questioned since his move to Ferrari. There were several examples of tense conversations between them over the radio earlier in the season which caused so much of a stir that the racer felt the need to speak publicly about how he is working with his new race engineer.
He said: “We’re constantly learning more and more about each other, we’re constantly adapting to the way both of us like to work. There’s a lot of speculation. I mean, most of it is BS. Ultimately, we have a great relationship. He’s been amazing to work with, he’s a great guy, working so hard – we both are – and we don’t always get it right every weekend. We have disagreements, like everyone does in relationships, but we work through them.”
