Lewis Hamilton is excited for his upcoming Ferrari move, although the Brit has some reasonable concerns.

Lewis Hamilton has admitted that it will be ‘tough’ to adapt to life at Ferrari at the start of the 2025 season due to clauses in his Mercedes contract preventing him from having contact with the team at Maranello before the end of the 2024 campaign.

The seven-time world champion will experience a significant change in just about every facet of his working and personal life. The change will be made even tougher by the fact that long-serving race engineer Peter ‘Bono’ Bonnington will not be making the switch to Maranello with him.

After Hamilton’s deal was announced, there was plenty of speculation regarding the future of Bonnington at Mercedes. After a period of silence on that front, the 49-year-old was promoted to head of race engineering, ending any lingering hopes that he would join his colleague and close friend at Ferrari.

“When I joined this team, I just came in and Bono was the current head engineer at the time,” Hamilton explained. “It’s got to be someone you get on with. It’s got to be someone that you ultimately are able to find it easy to build a relationship with and trust.

“So the next one, that’s going to be a discovery process. I’ll know early on whether or not it’s going to work or not. I think it’s just about communicating.”

Peter Bonnington will not join Hamilton at Ferrari next season (Image: Getty)

Hamilton does have some concerns about the high workload that he will experience upon joining Ferrari. “It’s tough,” he continued. “That makes it pretty difficult. I think it’s probably the same for anyone moving into a new office. It’s not until you go. It’ll be very heavy-loaded starting next year.”

With Hamilton’s 12-year partnership with Bonnington coming to an end at the end of the season, the Brit will be working with a new race engineer in 2025. That man will be Riccardo Adami, who previously worked with Sebastian Vettel and is currently the partner in crime for Carlos Sainz.

According to a report from Formu1a.uno earlier this year, Hamilton engaged in a phone call with Vettel to discuss the qualities of Adami, scouting out his future colleague at Ferrari ahead of his arrival over the winter.

The change will be an emotional one for Hamilton and Bonnington, who have forged an iconic friendship over the past 12 years. ​​”We won’t get to work next to each other every day, which will be sad for both of us,” he said in Zandvoort. “It’s going to be emotional but we’re always going to be in each other’s lives.”