I’d have loved to take Bonnington to Ferrari - Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton says he would have loved to take Peter Bonnington with him to Ferrari, following confirmation of his long-time race engineer’s promotion at Mercedes, which will being their relationship to an end after this season.

Bonnington – regularly referred to as ‘Bono’ – has worked with Hamilton throughout his time at Mercedes, the pair winning six drivers’ championships and 84 races together since 2013. This week Mercedes confirmed Bonnington will remain with the team when Hamilton goes to Ferrari next year, taking on the role of head of race engineering with immediate effect.

“I would have loved to have continued with Bono, of course,” Hamilton said. “We have a great relationship. You heard in Silverstone, he’s like a brother. But I’m really, really, really happy for him. Like for me, it’s just about people doing what’s best, you have to do whatever’s best for you.

“Packing up and leaving, I can only imagine _ it’s him and his partner, and it impacts both of them, so they had to do whatever is right for him. I knew it would be an unlikely scenario that he would go with me, because it’s such a drastic change within his life.

“But I’m really happy the team have acknowledged and made changes to [promote him] in the team so he can grow more with it. I think he’ll now be able to show even more of the great things that he’s been doing. But either way, we’re going to be family forever. We’ve spoken about it. We just want to make sure we finish on a high.”

Bonnington’s promotion was announced at the end of the mid-season break when all teams took a mandatory two-week factory shutdown, and during which time Hamilton visited a number of countries in Africa. The seven-time world champion says Formula 1 needs to make a race in the continent a priority, pointing to a permanent track in Rwanda that is currently in the planning stages.

“We can’t be adding races in other locations and continue to ignore Africa, which the rest of the world takes from, [but] no one gives anything to Africa,” he said. “There’s a huge amount of work there that needs to be done.

“I think a lot of the world that haven’t been there don’t realize how beautiful the place is and how vast it is… I think having a grand prix there would really be able to highlight how great the place is and bring in tourism and all sorts of things, so why are we not on that continent?

“The current excuse is maybe there’s not a track that is ready, but there is at least one track that’s ready…

“Rwanda is one of my favorite places I’ve been to. I’ve been doing a lot of work in the background and spoken to people in Rwanda and South Africa and that’s a long project in Rwanda, but it’s amazing that they’re so keen to get it.”