Lewis Hamilton reveals the 3-word Italian replacement for the iconic 'hammer time'

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton has soft-launched a new replacement for his iconic radio message from his race engineer, "Hammer Time". The British driver formed a strong bond with his former race engineer at Mercedes Peter Bonnington that worked like magic for 12 years.

The duo were arguably the most popular driver-engineer pairing on the grid and were often heard on the team radio on the broadcast. Bonnington, popularly known as Bono, would say the words "Hammer Time" to the seven-time F1 world champion when he wanted him to push his hardest just before a pitstop to extract the maximum performance from the tires.

Since Hamilton shifted teams ahead of the 2025 season to Ferrari and got a new engineer in Ricardo Adami, the 40-year-old reflected on working on a substitute to "Hammer Time" at the Italian team. In a video from the Ferrari event in Milan, he said:

"I don't remember anything apart from Bono saying -"

Teammate Charles Leclerc humorously asked for a complete statement:

"Come on, go on."

The Brit replied:

"Hammer Time. I literally have seven days to find the word to have Ricardo say."

Leclerc, who is fluent in Italian, suggested a three-word replacement and said:

"Tempo di Martello."

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc will race alongside each other for the next two years at least in order to bring back the title to Maranello.

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Lewis Hamilton heaps praise on his new teammate Charles Leclerc

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton has said his new teammate Charles Leclerc is "massively talented" and expects him to be fast in the 2025 season.

As per F1.com, the 105-time F1 race winner praised Leclerc's ability and said:

“Charles is massively talented. Getting to see him work opposite the table and watching him in the garage, it’s been really, really great. Obviously, he’s been here for a long time, so he knows the team well, he speaks Italian, he’s at home and at ease.

But because we already had a friendship before, that’s made it a lot easier to just get straight into working together. He’s incredibly talented, so he’s going to be so fast this year. I’m looking forward to learning what I can from him and supporting him alongside the team to deliver the best results we can get.”

Hamilton added he could not predict a timeframe for when he would completely acclimatize within the Italian team:

“I don’t have a crystal ball. All I can say is we’re just taking it one day at a time. We’re really, really just focused on doing our job, we’re not watching everything else that’s happening."

Lewis Hamilton had a positive one-and-a-half day at the official pre-season testing in Bahrain where he looked comfortable in the SF-25 on track.