Lewis Hamilton's race engineer under fire from F1 pundit

F1 pundit Ted Kravitz questioned Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton's race engineer Ricardo Adami for his "terse" exchange with the Brit at the end of the Q1 session of the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix qualifying. It has been an underwhelming weekend for the seven-time F1 world champion, as he has failed to extract the maximum out of the upgraded SF-25 thus far.

The 40-year-old has failed to get out of the first part of qualifying in both the sprint shootout and the main qualifying and will start the race from the pit lane. He was on course to turn his fortunes around on Saturday, but got his lap time deleted after running wide off the white lines at Radillon and qualified P16.

On his Ted's Notebook segment for Sky Sports, Kravitz pointed out an awkward exchange between Lewis Hamilton and Ricardo Adami and called out the latter for his unsympathetic response, saying:

“Did you think it was a bit terse on the radio between him and Riccardo Adami, saying, ‘Is there something wrong?’, and Riccardo Adami rather said flatly, ‘Yes, track limits, we are out’. I don’t know whether I expected a bit more empathy. I don’t know. Just listen to it yourself.

"It didn’t sound like a Lewis and Bono situation. I expected the engineer to say, ‘Ah, I’m sorry Lewis, bad luck mate, you’re out, it was track limits, hard done by pal’. The kind of thing that Bono would have said to him. Riccardo Adami isn’t Bono, I guess they are a different relationship there."

Adami and Hamilton's dynamic has been called into question on multiple occasions this season, with the latter even defending his race engineer a couple of races back.

Ferrari team boss reflects on Lewis Hamilton's difficult qualifying

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur admitted that it has been a difficult weekend for Lewis Hamilton at the iconic Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

As per F1, the Frenchman believed that the Brit was on pace with his teammate Charles Leclerc before getting his lap time deleted, saying:

"As for Lewis, he was unable to put everything together but the field is so close, a matter of just hundredths or even thousandths of a second between the cars.

"His pace was good, he was just one place behind Charles, but the track limits put him out and it is what it is. It’s true that it’s been a tough weekend for him so far, and, at this track, you need to build up confidence lap after lap."

Lewis Hamilton will start the race from the pit lane alongside Fernando Alonso, Kimi Antonelli, and Carlos Sainz after making a raft of changes to his power unit components and making setup changes to his car for the main race.