Ferrari confirm Clear capture

Editor

Jock Clear, Lewis Hamilton’s performance engineer at Mercedes, is on his way to Ferrari with the Italian outfit confirming they have recruited him.

The 51-year-old Clear has been part of Hamilton’s technical team for the past two seasons and played a major role in his Drivers’ Championship success this year.

However, he will swap Brackley for Maranello with new team principal Maurizio Arrivabene revealing at Fiorano that he will replace Pat Fry as head of engineering.

Fry and chief designer Nikolas Tombazis both lost their jobs last week as part of a Ferrari shake-up following a poor 2014 campaign during which they failed to win a single race.

There is still a sticking point over when exactly Clear will be released by Mercedes and start his new job with Arrivabene saying: “We respect agreements and regulation.”

Clear joined Mercedes in 1999 when they competed under the British American Racing name while he had stints as Jacques Villeneuve (1999-03), Takuma Sato (2004-05), Rubens Barrichello (2006-09), Michael Schumacher (2011-12) and Nico Rosberg’s (2010) race engineer before taking up the role with Hamilton in 2013.

One person who will not be joining the Ferrari revolution is Bob Bell, who resigned as Mercedes technical director in December 2013.

Arrivabene feels Ferrari now have the right technical staff.

“The team is there,” he said. “There is no great news to be announced, no surprises. We have to believe in the people we have.”