Jock Clear

Who is Jock Clear?

Jock Clear, born 1963 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, is a senior performance engineer working for Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher. Previously he was race engineer for Nico Rosberg from, Rubens Barrichello from and Takuma Sato.

Clear attended The Portsmouth Grammar School and graduated in 1987 with a degree in mechanical engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

His career in motorsport began at Lola Cars, where he worked as a design engineer before moving to the position of head of composite design at Benetton Formula in 1989. In 1992 he worked as senior designer at Leyton House Racing, then joined Team Lotus where he became Johnny Herbert's race engineer in 1994. When Lotus collapsed at the end of the year, he transferred to Williams F1 and engineered David Coulthard, who won his first Grand Prix in Portugal and finished third in the drivers' championship.

Jacques Villeneuve joined Williams in 1996 and Clear was his race engineer; the Canadian won the world championship the following year under Clear's guidance. When Villeneuve moved to British American Racing for the 1999 season, his engineer followed suit. The relationship continued until the 2003 Japanese Grand Prix, when Villeneuve walked out on the eve of the race. Takuma Sato took up the vacant seat and drove to sixth position on his racing debut with the team. Clear worked with Sato again in 2004-2005 and then with Rubens Barrichello from 2006-2009. After the team became Brawn GP in 2009, Barrichello won the European and Italian Grands Prix and finished in third place in the World Championship.