Who is “Italian Bono”?
By: Jake Rajala
Lewis Hamilton may be one of the very best sports figures to walk the earth. Well, let it be known that he doesn’t do everything for his team. He has a crew that does the “dirty work”. In particular, he has an “intern” by the name of “Carlo Santi”, who is the lead engineer for Ferrari. There should be a statue of him in Hamilton’s lawn, as he’s half the reason Hamilton won his first race with Ferrari. This comes after Hamilton replaced Ricciardo Adami with Santi.
It’s been widely shown that his first win with Ferrari was his first win since 2024! He has 106 F1 victories.
Hamilton has emphasized the importance between engineer and driver. Per F1, Hamilton said, “The driver-engineer working together is very, very important. I think last year, Adami and I had a really good relationship. He’s a lovely guy. We worked relatively well together.
Hamilton also said, “I chose a different set-up this weekend, just ciphering through the data, working really well with my engineer, he’s absolutely awesome, and I really love working with him”.
The 2025 season featured Hamilton struggling when the driver-engineer goes wrong. Hamilton and Riccardo Adami struggled with communication. He said he “felt like he was along for the ride”.
He also suggested to the team that “they should have a tea break, while they are at it”. It feels like Aaron Rodgers getting upset with Mike McCarthy when they were both on the Green Bay Packers.
We’ve seen sports figures change agents when they don’t get the contract offer they want. We also see them find a new training program if they want to upgrade their body in new ways. This is similar to F1 drivers changing their lead engineer.
Hamilton noted that a change after another short while would be detrimental to the team’s chances. In other words, they are going to work with what they’ve got.
So, what personal details should we know about this rising genius?
Well, he is 52 years old. So, he’s 11 years older than Hamilton. He was also born in Verona, which has a population of 255,000 people.
He studied mechanical engineering, specialising in vehicle engineering and dynamics, at Polytechnic University of Milan. In 2016, he became the performance engineer for Kimi Raikkonen. He got a taste of the Ferrari life when he had a leadership role with the “remote garage”.
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