Hamilton receives fresh support from new performance engineer from Belgian Grand Prix

Having delivered a sensational comeback drive at Spa-Francorchamps, Ferrari's seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton revealed that he has a new performance engineer to work alongside race engineer Riccardo Adami.

Ferrari endured an up-and-down weekend at Spa-Francorchamps. While Charles Leclerc delivered an absolutely faultless performance all weekend long, his team-mate Lewis Hamilton struggled to put together his laps in both the sprint and standard qualifying session.

The Monegasque started from P3 on the grid, and managed to maintain this spot in the tricky, damp conditions, fending of the attacks of Max Verstappen whose Red Bull was arguably more competitive in the early stages of the 44-lap race.

Leclerc then pitted at the right time, and never lost his concentration, keeping Verstappen at bay despite enormous pressure from the reigning champion.

His team-mate Hamilton started from P18 following a tough qualifying session on Saturday. The Briton was excellent in the damp conditions, picking off five drivers in the opening stages of the race.

The seven-time world champion pitted at absolutely perfect time, gaining a lot thanks to his early stop. He then went on to close in on Alex Albon, but with his aerodynamic configuration he was unable to make any further progress.

Speaking after the Spa-Francorchamps race, the seven-time world champion revealed he has a new performance engineer to work alongside race engineer Riccardo Adami.

It has now emerged that Hamilton's new performance engineer is Johannes Hatz, who graduated at the University of Sussex in mechanical engineering before completing his master degree at Univertsity College London.

He worked at Team 75 Motorsport as race engineer before he joined Scuderia Toro Rosso. He initially worked as junior vehicle dynamics engineer at the F1 team’s Faenza base. He then went on to act as performance engineer before joining the Italian outfit’s trackside department as performance engineer.

Hatz left Toro Rosso which was then later renamed AlphaTauri at the end of the 2023 season to join Ferrari as vehicle performance engineer.

“It’s not easy to switch engineers within the middle of the season, but it's someone that I've known for years [and was] actually from my previous team with me, but not in that position.

“So we're getting used to each other and having to learn super, super quick. I think the changes that we had [to the car this weekend] really caught both of us out, but I think we did a great job overnight and we'll just get stronger and stronger together," Hamilton said.