During the Safety Car drama of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Peter Bonnington had to keep Lewis Hamilton updated on what was happening as best he could.
The entire interaction between Bonnington, known as Bono, and Hamilton eclipses just how the drama unfolded.
It starts on lap 53 when Bono tells the Mercedes driver that Max Verstappen is stuck in traffic and that the “gap is now at 12.0 (seconds)”
It was on this lap where Bono had to inform Hamilton of the Safety Car. He does this by calmly saying: “Turn 14...Yellow...Yellow.”
Once the Safety Car is out, Hamilton is clearly not happy after he knows the gap is going to close between him and second place Verstappen. “S*** Bono, man” is how Hamilton addresses the situation and also goes to say “yeah it's unbelievable man” to describe how he feels about the situation.
The British driver then asks his race engineer what the situation behind him was, to which Bono replies, “Verstappen has pitted he had a free pit stop... we would have lost track position to him.”
Bono then explains that, “this bunch field has to bunch, and they will have to send lapped cars through... so it may not restart.”
This comes before the FIA announced their decision to not let lapped cars through. It seems at this point in the Mercedes camp they were not expecting the race to restart.
This did not seem to comfort Hamilton, though, as he replied with, “Oh f*** is he behind me?” Bono remained calm and said, “He will be... this is going to take a while to sort out.”
Bono also explains that they would have fallen behind Verstappen if they had pitted.
Hamilton becomes increasingly frustrated in this situation and seems to have a problem with the speed of the Safety Car. “Safety Car’s going way too slow.” He repeats his frustrations with the Safety Car multiple times as he believes it is not going at full speed down the straights.
With just three laps remaining, Hamilton questions how many cars are between him and the Red Bull driver. Soon after, Bono tells him lapped cars will be overtaking, but then must correct himself “they’re not going to overtake actually... they’re not going to allow the cars to overtake.”
The radio shows the confusion for Hamilton’s team as Bono says, "we believe they may start the race like this.”
But when they enter the penultimate lap of the race, Bono must tell Hamilton that they are letting four cars overtake, the four cars that separate him and second place Verstappen.
During the final lap, when Verstappen is hot on Hamilton’s heel, the latter expresses his frustrations, “Man this is getting manipulated, man!”
Once the race finishes, you can hear the disappointment in Bono’s voice as he says, “I’m just speechless Lewis. Absolutely speechless.”