Jock Clear to leave Mercedes for Ferrari

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In the round-up: Mercedes performance engineer Jock Clear, who was also Jacques Villeneuve race engineer when he won the 1997 drivers’ championship, will move to Ferrari.

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Hamilton to lose senior engineer (BBC)

“Jock Clear, Hamilton’s senior performance engineer, will effectively be the replacement for Pat Fry, Ferrari’s former engineering director.”

Christian’s end of year report (Red Bull)

“[Adrian Newey has] overseen the design of the new car and will be coming to some of the races and he’ll be at some of the pre-season tests as well.”

Force India targets Williams for 2015 (Autosport)

Technical director Andrew Green: “That should really be where we’re at, and I think we can do that with all the things we’re putting in place for next year, and the windtunnel testing.”

Christmas is a bit of a trial for Ecclestone (Reuetrs)

“‘This is not a robbery. I am collecting for the Bavarian state,’ says the cartoon figure on horseback as Ecclestone holds the sack of money.”

UK F1 viewing figures record slight year-on-year drop (The F1 Broadcasting Blog)

“The combined average of 4.01m is up 2.3 percent on 2012’s 3.92m, but down 1.3 percent on 2013’s average of 4.06m.”

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Comment of the day

Sebastian Vettel is finding himself short of colleagues at Ferrari.

Chris Dyer, Aldo Costa, Stefano Domenicali, Luca di Montezemolo, Pat Fry, Nikolas Tombazis, and now Hirohide Hamashima. Seriously, who is left at Ferrari?

This whole “sack everyone” mentality isn’t going to improve their wind tunnel or simulator.
@Kingshark

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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45 comments on “Jock Clear to leave Mercedes for Ferrari”

  1. at this rate, Vettel will end up getting off the car to change his tyres!!!

    1. Well, at least with the lack of engineers in Maranello, nobody will be able to say it’s all car when he wins. :)

    2. Some may call this nitpicking, but out of all those men on that list almost everyone had his replacement announced already.

      The only vacancies are the positions of two of the latest departures, Tombazis and Hiroshima.

      So I feel the COTD to be a bit… tabloid, sorry. It’s not like there’s not enough workforce left, at best, it’s the continuity that will suffer. But then point that out orderly.

    3. I think that may be Why they called up Gutierrez.

      Joking of course. I think Ferrari will give Esteban the chance he deserves but at this point in time, I wonder what Ferrari will be like when Kimi (more than likely) retires at the end of next season

    4. I think Ferrari are actually trying to achieve something now, rather than making the same actions (mistakes I would say) and hope for a different outcome. No one can criticize Ferrari now. I think people are throwing cheap jokes at Ferrari without noticing that what Ferrari was doing before was laughable not what they are doing now. The windtunnel is done and has been so for almost a year Mr. CotD. This time it should be put to use on the 2015 project. I think finally Ferrari can say truthfully that they are trying everything they can. Hiring qualified and certified staff, and firing the opposite. I think that’s simple. For Ferrari fans however there’s a long road ahead, this restructuring that has been supposedly ongoing for 4 years started this year. Ferrari shouldn’t reap the rewards in time for 2015. Anyway people should be able to criticize Ferrari by then when the new staff has actually been responsible for something, the first Allison is this new car, the 2015 car!

  2. Will someone PLEASE just get Bernie that coffin he’s been asking for? It is so past time for him to be gone.

    1. Oh My God!

    2. Waoh! That’s a very terrible thing to say about anyone.
      A lot of people here call drivers names, accuse them of not having the correct ‘personality’ and even say they are not smart enough but time and time again I have seen and read some of the most classless, thuggish and uncouth statements here.
      Yours sir/madam is one of those.
      No matter how much u detest Bernie E, it’s not good enough to say what u just wrote. Sadly Bernie’s actions of late has not endered him to many but it still does not justify the abuse the man gets here by some commenters.

      1. Oh please, the man’s on his way out of this world sooner than later – it’s just biology. He’s a greedy, smarmy, selfish little wannabe dictator who cosies up to real world dictators as long as it makes him and his buddies an extra buck – soon will not be soon enough.

      2. Meh, seems pretty mild compared to some of Bernies own statements.

    3. I’d settle for giving him boat loads of money on the condition he completely leaves F1 and is barred from interviews to the press for the rest of his life. To him though, it would be worse than death. He’s a old, arrogant, narcissistic fool and has ruined F1. In the 23 years I have been following F1, it has steadily gone down hill because of him. I’ve had enough.

  3. 2014 down on 2013?! 2013 was fairly dry and uneventful as I remember it? This year, particularly the early part was great with Bahrain, Aus and Canada. Must be something to do with some non-racing factor, double points?

    1. @frankjaeger Maybe the reason is that, after a big dominance by Red Bull, people wanted races with more unexpected outcomes. Then Mercedes was realisticly the only chance during 16 out of 19 weekends. So from bif dominance we went into utter dominance. And that is of course kind of boring.

      1. Yeah dominance ain’t fun. At least Lewis had a worthy adversary to spa (Excuse the pun aha!) with. Give me 7 different drivers winning 7 different races again!

        @journeye Haha how the ratings would plummet if Lewis gets a dog

      2. big, no bif

    2. @frankjaeger Or possibly that Sebastian Vettel has more British fans than we give him credit for? :D

    3. A big bout of Flu over last winter must have wiped out a fair few Rolex wearing 70+ year olds, hence why the viewing figures are slightly down. A few mild winters and the numbers will soon rise again. LoL.

      Bernie says “Get the flu jab and buy another Rolex”

      1. Hahaha

      2. ColdFly F1 (@)
        19th December 2014, 7:26

        good one!

    4. The article suggests that one reason for the overall drop in figures for this season is the negative press that was put out over the winter about the engines, which depressed viewing figures in the opening races.

      I’d also suggest that another reason is that, on an anecdotal basis, there are a number of people who feel that the BBC’s broadcasts are declining in terms of quality and are leaving the BBC because of that (the overall decline in viewing figures seems to be because the BBC have lost more viewers than Sky has gained over the course of the year).

      I would be interested to see how the BBC’s radio audience has fluctuated over the same period (which are not included in those figures), since that service still seems to be reasonably popular.

    5. petebaldwin (@)
      19th December 2014, 9:46

      @frankjaeger – Ah but you have to account for older people dieing. F1 isn’t for young people as Bernie said so with no-one new watching the sport, the viewing figures will gradually decline until no-one switches on. It’ll be a sad day with banks closing worldwide due to lack of interest and Rolex going into liquidation…

    6. Bear in mind that Bernie, Luca and Seb were slagging off the new engines at every possible opportunity. Small wonder fewer people wanted to tune in.

      Although I reckon the World Cup had something to do with it. Same reason for 2012, with the Olympics. People couldn’t get their sporting fixation elsewhere in 2013.

      1. Maybe the viewing figures lag behind the quality of racing. 2012 was awesome, so more people watched F1 in 2013. 2013 wasn’t so great, so fewer people watched F1 in 2014. So perhaps next year…

  4. About the ranking results…. well, I also disagree with the RIC-ALO-HAM order (mine was HAM-RIC-ALO) but as I understand it, trying to separate driver from car to make the ranking gets quite hard. I respect everybody’s opinions about it, but let’s not be so harsh on the replies. The ranking is well explained every year, and I don’t like all the arguments exposed for each driver, but they are valid arguments in the end.

    1. It’s much ado about nothing in my eyes. Driver rankings are based on 2 things:
      1) Opinion – by its nature subjective and open to people who disagree
      2) If every driver in the field had the same car, what would the standings be? – Posed like this, I think Keith’s rankings are more valid. Yes Hamilton won 11 races, but Ricciardo won 3 in an inferior car. All else being equal, I think Ricciardo would have challenged closely, and perhaps won, the championship. The fact it was his first year in a top team adds clout to his status.

      Having said that I personally would probably have put Hamilton top. But if Keith’s opinion were the same as mine there wouldn’t be much point in me reading this website.

  5. Wait. Someone JOINED Ferrari?!

    1. He doesn’t know it yet, but they are planning to surprise him with the team Principal job by the time his 1st day comes round because they sacked off everyone who should have been his seniors. So by the laws of attrition, JOCK CLEAR NEW FERRARI TEAM PRINCIPAL you heard it here 1st ♻😃

      1. What about Arrivabene? Are they going to adopt the Mercedes structure (Toto-Paddy)?

        1. It was a joke!
          But he is the 3rd TP that Ferrari have had this year so who knows what might happen between now and next November when Clear’s notice period has been served and he can leave Merc.

  6. Bernie’s Christmas card is a bit rich. Lest we forget, Dr Gribkowsky admitted to, and was convicted of, taking bribes from Bernie Ecclestone, yet Mr E managed to get the corresponding charges of *paying* bribes dropped – by paying that enormous fine (which he managed to raise in just one week). Perhaps the Munich authorities liked the nice things he said a few years ago about Hitler…

  7. The only thing I’ve really noticed about Jock Clear, when he was race engineer for both Schumacher and Hamilton, is that he always seems to take a conservative approach with just about anything. He also prefers less pitstops and track position over more pitstops and outright pace. Anyway, I wish him good luck at Ferrari.

    1. @kingshark
      Jock was not race engineer he was performance engineer for Schumacher / Hamilton. Peter Bonnington is RE for those two.
      Apart from that yeah i agree but we also need to remember he also worked as On Track Performance Engineer for BAR Honda , Williams and Brawn , so lets see how he goes at Ferrari.

      1. Jock was not race engineer he was performance engineer for Schumacher / Hamilton. Peter Bonnington is RE for those two.

        Good point, thanks for the correction.

  8. That Mercedes is a good looking car from the front.

  9. “Oooo look at me I was able to pay my way out of my illegal bribery activities, aren’t I clever.”

    There’s a word for people like this but I can’t say it here.

  10. So basically, via a long detour, Ferrari have traded Perez for Gutierrez. Does not sound like an upgrade to me.

  11. The Hamilton/Bonno/Clear entente was an increasingly effective one in the later stages of 2014, and I think Peter and Jock had finally cracked how to extract the best from Lewis, and since Jock consistently was able to give Lewis the superior race pace in the team, I would imagine Lewis is wishing he was staying put right now.

  12. Next time we’ll probably see Jock Campbell join Ferrari………..that’d benice, to be honest.

  13. Next time we’ll probably see Jock Campbell join Ferrari………..that’d be nice, to be honest.

    1. @davidnotcoulthard
      And then Jock Strap will be joining to keep all those “roosters” in their place.

      1. @beneboy he will come worn by a resurrected Jochen Rindt.

  14. I was struck by the bit in the bbc article that apparently Mercedes were happy to let Jock Clear go. I know he’s famous and has been around forever, but it does imply maybe Ferrari are giving him seniority that Mercedes don’t think he’s suited to.

    I wish we knew more about the engineers. I’d like to know how they let Canada happen, for example – they monitor brake temperatures, so how did they not see the failure coming?

  15. Wondering if LDM leaving Ferrari and joining CVC was all planned to help push through some stupid engine rule change to help Ferrari out. Wouldnt put it past them, mid season they knew the engine was rubbish so they formulated this master plan – he’s probably still being paid by Ferrari!

  16. Finally somebody apart from Seb finds Ferrari attractive :P

    On a serious note though, Jock Clear has been a long standing loyal member of the team since its inception into British American Racing. A senior statesman of the sport and we can wish him well as he embarks on a new challenge (and a big one) at Ferrari.

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