Lewis Hamilton’s relationships with key figures at Ferrari have been called into question this year. Aldo Costa, who designed several of his title-winning cars at Mercedes, has assessed the dynamics at Maranello from afar.

Hamilton has sounded frustrated with engineer Riccardo Adami on several occasions throughout the year. This may be the inevitable consequence of his disappointing results.

At Mercedes, Hamilton worked with Peter Bonnington for 12 seasons. It was the longest-serving and most successful driver-engineer duo in F1 history.

More worrying, perhaps, is the apparent tension between Hamilton and Ferrari chairman John Elkann. Elkann told his F1 drivers to ‘talk less’ in a bombshell interview after the Brazilian GP.

Aldo Costa warns Ferrari they need to be ‘very careful’ with Lewis Hamilton

Costa joined Mercedes shortly before Hamilton arrived and was crucial to his 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018 championship wins. He then stepped back to an advisory role before leaving for Dallara in 2020.

The Italian had ‘never worked abroad’ before he joined Mercedes, so he can sympathise with Hamilton, who had spent his whole career at British-based teams before 2025.

Costa says Hamilton needs to establish complete trust in his inner sanctum to deliver his best form on track. He wants to be the team’s protagonist, but he joined a team where Charles Leclerc had already been achieving success for six seasons.

“Lewis is English-English, he’s just always worked in England,” said Costa, via Top Speed. “Like me, I’m Italian and had never worked abroad. The first few months for Lewis must have been incredibly tough, getting used to the mechanics and pursuing competitiveness.

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“Lewis is someone who needs to work with a fairly small group of people, to trust these people blindly—his race engineer, his technical director, his chief designer—and he needs to feel that these people are working with him to push him to win.

“He’s the team’s standard-bearer and he needs to feel in this position. If he doesn’t feel in this situation, he loses a bit of performance. He likes the idea of ​​being the hero with the whole team behind him.

“I understand he may have had some difficulties, also because he found a very fast teammate who had known the team for years and was loved and respected. You have to be very careful with him, push him, follow him.”

Ferrari have changed since Aldo Costa was there

Before his time at Mercedes, Costa had spent 16 years at Ferrari. He was the number two designer behind the legendary Rory Byrne, then took over from 2005.

He was responsible for the F2007, which remains the last Ferrari to win the drivers’ world championship (in the hands of Kimi Raikkonen).

Costa credits his success with the Scuderia to a no-blame culture, but the team may now have changed – reports suggest ex-technical director Enrico Cardile has been made a scapegoat for the flaws of the SF-25.

“At Ferrari, there was a structure that protected the engineering group without ever blaming anyone,” Costa said. “Ferrari at that time was a model for everyone, and it’s no secret that so many people who emerged from that group went on to become successful.”