Ferrari offer Clear view of driver coach role

Jon Wilde
Charles Leclerc, Jock Clear

Charles Leclerc, Jock Clear

Ferrari have revealed how Jock Clear’s role as a driver coach within their F1 team and academy is to be expanded.

Clear, who has been with Ferrari since 2015, formerly worked for Mercedes and was Nico Rosberg’s race engineer – a role he had previously held at Williams, where he helped Jacques Villeneuve to the 1997 World Championship.

That season, Clear had been in direct competition with Michael Schumacher, but later found himself working alongside the seven-time World Champion at Mercedes – and now he is mentoring the legendary German’s son.

Mick Schumacher is, of course, part of the Ferrari Driver Academy, essentially ‘loaned’ to Haas for the start of his F1 career, and it was recently reported how Clear had been playing a role in the 21-year-old’s development.

Now, further details have emerged of precisely what guidance Clear, 57, is passing on to the collection of young drivers at Ferrari, spearheaded by Charles Leclerc, 23, and his new, three years older team-mate Carlos Sainz.

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Jock Clear, Charles Leclerc
Jock Clear, Charles Leclerc

“Jock Clear is a great person, a great professional and has been in Ferrari for many years,” said team principal Mattia Binotto, quoted by Formula 1.

“His role in 2020 was being the driver coach, an engineer who is supporting the drivers in order to perform in terms of driving to their best.

“He looks at their lines, looks at the way they are braking through the corner, accelerating and managing tyres.

“They are there to support the race engineers, performance engineers and drivers, to make sure the driver is developing well.”

Ferrari’s aim is, of course, to nurture the talent they have identified themselves and brought into their own nest, and that is where Clear’s expertise comes in.

Binotto added: “We had some chats with Jock in the past weeks and we would like to develop him even more as a driver coach, not only for Charles but looking ahead at the future to our own young driver line-up we have at the Ferrari Driver Academy.

“We’ve got Mick in Haas starting his experience in F1, but we’ve got still young drivers competing in F2 – like, for example, Robert Shwartzman. And there is Callum Ilott, who will be our test driver, will do simulator and will do free practices.

“So the role of Jock will be to assist all these drivers to develop themselves as drivers and try to exploit the most of their potential.”

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