Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer Peter Bonnington has committed his future to Mercedes amid months of speculation that he could follow the seven-time champion to Ferrari.

Hamilton will join the Italians ahead of next season, ending an 11-year spell with Mercedes. He has enjoyed extraordinary success with the Silver Arrows, winning six of his seven titles as they dominated Formula 1 between 2014 and 2021.

Throughout that time, Bonnington has been one of his closest allies within the paddock. Affectionately nicknamed ‘Bono’, the 49-year-old’s voice is familiar to fans as the engineer who is in constant contact with Hamilton while he races on track.

Since Hamilton’s Ferrari plan was confirmed in February, there has been speculation over whether Bonnington might choose to follow him. But he has now closed the door on that possibility by signing fresh terms with Mercedes.

Bonnington has been promoted to head of race engineering at the team. Starting his duties with immediate effect, he will combine his workload with his current role with Hamilton for the rest of the season.

He is also set to continue as a race engineer to one of the team’s drivers next year. However, it is not yet clear whether that will be new team leader George Russell, who currently works with Marcus Dudley, or his team-mate – likely to be teenager Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

Bonnington has worked for the Brackley-based team since 2006 – several years before it adopted its current Mercedes guise. He worked on Jenson Button’s side of the garage during the Honda and Brawn years before serving as race engineer to Michael Schumacher.

Mirror Sport understands a clause exists in Hamilton’s Mercedes contract which prevents him from directly approaching colleagues and asking them to follow him to Ferrari. But still boss team Toto Wolff wasn’t entirely certain that Bonnington was going to stay beyond this season.

Several days after Hamilton’s move to Italy was confirmed, the Austrian said: “I think this is a discussion which everyone needs to have in the months to come. And as much as I’ve spoken with Bono already, when I told him he said, ‘Is it April the first?’ That’s something which we will discuss in the future.”

Bonnington’s decision to stay means Hamilton will have a new race engineer to work with when he starts at Ferrari. It is likely to be Riccardo Adami who currently performs that role for Carlos Sainz whose place the Briton will be taking on the grid.