Mercedes Formula 1 team boss Toto Wolff admits that there will be discussions within the team about a possible move from Peter Bonnington to Ferrari. The Brit has been the permanent race engineer alongside the seven-time world champion since Lewis Hamilton arrived at Mercedes in 2013, which is why Hamilton’s Ferrari move for 2025 immediately led to media speculation as to whether Bonnington would also be coming to Maranello next year.
Top drivers who change teams are often accompanied by employees they worked with at their previous teams, either because they specifically ask to come along or because the people in question enjoy working with the driver and, like him, see a change as a new challenge and see it as a sign that the target team has big ambitions.
The new team is usually open to the idea if bringing familiar faces with them helps the driver settle into an unfamiliar environment. Hamilton has a special relationship with ‘Bono’, who has been with the team in Brackley since the early Honda era, having started his career with Jordan. Although it is not known whether Bonnington is ready to move his life to Italy, Wolff indicated that he expects the topic to come up.
“I think this is a discussion that everyone needs to have in the coming months,” he says. “And as much as I’ve talked to Bono, when I told him [von Hamiltons Wechsel] told, he said: ‘Is it April first?’ This is something we will discuss in the future.”
Is Mercedes foregoing the “Gardening Leave”?
One complication is that Bonnington would have to stay with Mercedes until the final race of this season in Abu Dhabi on December 8th and then be available for Ferrari in early 2025, meaning a very tight transition in terms of the so-called “gardening leave”. Normally, high-ranking engineers are only allowed to move to a competing team after a break so as not to take current sensitive information with them.
Aside from team boss Frederic Vasseur, Hamilton will find few familiar faces at Ferrari, although former Mercedes performance director Loic Serra was one of Vasseur’s first key signings and will officially start with the team next year.
Hamilton also worked with Clear during his first two years at Mercedes, although the latter is currently primarily focused on Ferrari’s youth program. Should Bonnington become available for the race engineer position at Ferrari, the team would have to restructure and find a new role for Riccardo Adami, who currently works with Carlos Sainz and was previously Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari race engineer.
Brawn and Co. once followed Schumi
However, a look at history shows that it is not uncommon for big drivers to take high-ranking employees with them when changing teams. When Michael Schumacher moved from Benetton to Ferrari in 1996, he was followed by technical director Ross Brawn and chief designer Rory Byrne, as well as other key team members from Enstone, all of whom were seen by then Maranello boss Jean Todt as key elements of a winning package.
Other notable examples include racing engineer Jock Clear, who followed Jacques Villeneuve from Williams to BAR in 2000, and Andrea Stella, who accompanied Fernando Alonso’s move from Ferrari to McLaren in 2015 and stayed after the Spaniard’s departure, eventually becoming team boss .