Former Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley has advised Lewis Hamilton against bringing several members of his Mercedes entourage with him to Maranello next season. The seven-time world champion will be without a host of key allies when he makes the switch this winter.
Speaking to the Formula For Success podcast, Smedley explained: “When a seven-time world champion chooses your team to come and work at your team. I don’t think he needs to bring an entourage with him.
“And I always spoke about this, this publicly, both for Lewis himself and for people like Bono [Peter Bonnington]. I think that it’s quite a dangerous game to play to follow the driver around because if the driver falls out of favour or the driver decides that after one year this is not for him, he can’t take the entourage with him.
“So I think that Lewis has done the right thing. He’d obviously have Team LH around him, his management and trainers and people like that. But I think trying to take engineers would have been a bit of a misstep.
“So I think that the team will embrace him. If you go there with a bit of a reputation, like what Lewis has got for being able to deliver, the team will get around him.”