Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Formula 1, Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, Lando Norris
John McDougall
Topics: Formula 1, Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, Lando Norris
Ferrari are poised to poach a new race engineer from McLaren for Lewis Hamilton ahead of the 2026 Formula 1 season.
The new F1 campaign gets under way in March with 24 Grand Prix and six sprint races due to be held across the globe over the next year.
McLaren go into the season seeking to win a third successive Constructors' Championship, while Lando Norris is the defending Drivers' Champion and will be aiming to defend his 2025 crown which ended four straight years of Max Verstappen dominance.
Last season was the end of a rules set in the sport with the ground effect era of cars which came into F1 in 2022 ditched.
Advert
In their place are cars based more on active aerodynamics, with the drag reduction system that had been in F1 since 2011 retired.
And there has also been a big change on the engine front with the previous generation of turbo hybrid power units that had been in place since 2014 now changed to ensure a more 50/50 energy split across the internal combustion engine and the electrical elements, with the MGU-H removed.
A private test lasting five days in Barcelona will take place this week, with teams permitted to run on any three of the five days they choose to.
Two three-day public tests will then happen in Bahrain, before the season opener in March around Melbourne's Albert Park.
The upcoming season is a huge one and none more so than for Ferrari and Hamilton.
Last season was Hamilton's first with the famous Italian team, but it proved to be his worst F1 season ever after finishing sixth in the drivers' standings and not standing on the podium once.
His best moment was winning the Sprint Race around Shanghai early last season, while his highest Grand Prix finish was fourth.
For Ferrari too it proved to be a disappointing campaign, finishing fourth in the team standings after many expected them to be challenging at the top after ending the 2024 season as runners-up to McLaren.
As well as the focus being on the track, there is also attention on who will be trackside as Hamilton's race engineer after Ricciardo Adami was taken off the seven-time world champion's car earlier this year to focus on the Italian team's Driver Academy.
And it has now been reported that Ferrari will turn to McLaren - who Hamilton drove for between 2007 and 2012 and where he won his first title back in 2008 - to fill the vacancy.
According to Autoracer, McLaren's former Lead Trackside Performance Engineer Cedric Michel-Grosjean will become Hamilton's new race engineer after serving a limited period of gardening leave.
Recently, Grosjean has been working on Oscar Piastri's car since the Australian arrived at the team in 2023 from Alpine.