Bonnington has been race engineer for Lewis Hamilton since 2012 and helped steer the Englishman to six of his seven world titles.
With Hamilton set to depart the organisation at the end of the year, Bonnington – more commonly known by his nickname, Bono – will take on a new role.
That will see him move into the newly created role as head of race engineering, a position he’s taken up with immediate effect.
He will dovetail the new job with his existing duties supporting Hamilton.
Bonington is best known as the voice on the radio, especially for the ‘It’s hammer time’ messages.
“I think I came up with hammer time,” Hamilton explained in 2022.
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“There was a point where he was like, ‘now is the time to push,’ and I got frustrated with him because I was like, ‘dude, I’m already pushing!’
“But I was like, if you’re trying to signify now’s the time to go all out, use everything you have, I said just tell me it’s hammer time. That was part of our growth.
“I’m incredibly grateful for Bono, I’ve had an amazing journey with him. I think we’ve got one of the longest, if not the longest driver-engineer partnership that there’s been.
“He’s been hugely integral to my success.
“He’s probably one of the few people that can truly stand me, I would say, like on the good and bad days,” Hamilton added.
“How calm he’s able to be throughout the race, and how he’s been able to guide and help navigate me through a race, I don’t think there’s many people who could do that.”
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The 49-year-old Bonnington began his tenure in Formula 1 in 2004 working as a data engineer at Jordan.
He then moved to Honda (now Mercedes) where he worked alongside Andrew Shovlin, helping Jenson Button to the 2009 world championship (when the team was known as Brawn).
Bonnington remained with the organisation following Mercedes’ takeover, becoming race engineer to Michael Schumacher in late 2011.
It was announced in February that Hamilton will leave Mercedes for Ferrari next season.
That raised questions as to whether Bonnington would follow the driver he’s engineered for more than a decade.
However, while Hamilton and Bonnington have their respective futures laid out, it’s less clear who will replace them.
Kimi Antonelli remains the favourite for the seat, the Italian campaigning in Formula 2 alongside testing older-spec F1 machinery.
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