Jock Clear to coach Mick Schumacher on F1 debut

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In the round-up: Jock Clear, who worked with Michael Schumacher at Mercedes and was race engineer to his 1997 championship rival Jacques Villeneuve, will assist Schumacher’s son Mick in his rookie F1 campaign.

What they say

Mattia Binotto said Clear will work not with Leclerc in the main team as well as Ferrari Driver Academy members including Mick Schumacher, who will made his F1 debut with Haas this year:

Jock is a great person, a great professional, he has been in Ferrari [for] many years.

His role in 2020 was being what we call a driver coach, an engineer who is supporting the drivers in order to perform in terms of driving to their best. Looking at the lines, looking at the way they are braking through the corner, accelerating, managing tyres. So they are there to support the race engineers, the performance engineers and the drivers to make sure that the driver is developing well.

We had some chats with Jock in the past weeks, we would like to develop him even more as a driver coach, not only for Charles, but looking ahead at the future, to our whole young drivers line-up we’ve got, the Ferrari Driver Academy.

Next year 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. We’ve got Callum Ilott who will be our driver next year will do simulations we do through practice sessions.

So the role of Jock will be to assist these drivers to develop themselves as drivers, trying to exploit the most of their potential.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Following the confirmation of changes to the 2021 F1 calendar yesterday including the postponement of Australia and China’s rounds of the world championship Sumedh suggests a better way to organise this year’s championship:

Somehow, I feel we will again get a 17- or 18-race season, but spread out across a longer time period. Similar to the early 2000s seasons where one would wait two to three whole weeks just to see Michael Schumacher win in a boring race.

Why don’t they race in blocks? Like a ‘Europe-1′ where you have five or six races in eight to 10 weeks, then break for a month and start a ‘Middle East’ block where again you do four or five races in six to seven weeks then break again. Then a ‘Europe-2’, ‘Americas’ and ‘Asia’.

The drivers and staff can also go home in the breaks an not be in a bubble for longer time period. I liked the intense nature of the 2020 season but don’t mind it being short intense blocks rather than the entire 17 races being one intense block crammed in five months
Sumedh

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Author information

Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....
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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11 comments on “Jock Clear to coach Mick Schumacher on F1 debut”

  1. I’ve already replied to the COTD once, but I’ll do it again here:
    Holding the North American races together would be viable if Montreal’s climatic conditions in October/November weren’t unfavorable for F1. In the suggested format, the Middle Eastern places would fall into an unideal time of year, even though they’re only suitable in the early and ending-phases of seasons.
    The intention behind the idea itself is good, but climatic conditions can’t get ignored.

    1. @jerejj How about having most of Asian races in spring, all the European in summer, the Americas in September-October and then finish it off in November-December with what’s left from Asia, maybe Africa etc…?
      Montreal in early September can’t be that bad and the same can be said about Austin, Mexico & Brazil in late September-October… Sure not ideal as Montreal is best in June and Mexico in November, but not forbidding…

      1. Yeah, September can just about work for the 4 Americas races. And even if weather is a bit difficult, as long as it is not unsafe for the drivers, we can go have a race right? Not all races need to be in between 20 degrees and 35 degrees temperature. So what if it is low grip or tyres are difficult to work with because it is too hot / too snowy, it is an additional unique challenge for the drivers.

        We got two classics as soon as F1 tried a really low grip circuit and tried an almost-oval circuit. Yeah, the drivers were all ‘this is not F1, we are only at ~80%, etc.’ But the viewers enjoyed. Variety works for F1.

        Look at other sports. In cricket, batsmen don’t want seaming conditions / spinning pitches but the administrators ensure that we get a variety of pitches. Some easy to bat on, some difficult. In tennis, it is clear that some players ace clay, others ace hard courts but you don’t change those tournaments based on the players’ comments / feedback. Football is played in sun, rains and even in snow.
        Tackling all such environmental challenges is why the sportspersons are paid so heavily.

      2. @black Temp-wise, Mexico City is good all-year-round, and yes, Montreal is decent in early-September. Austin is still quite hot in September, though, but maybe towards the very end, it might work.
        @sumedh

    2. ….speaking of weather, here in Oz, Jan/Feb is the season for cyclones, which swirl the opposite way to north of the equator. They are named in boy-girl-boy-girl order & one can put their name on the list. Names can be repeated, but not if the previous one caused a fatality.
      The current Cyclone just off North Queensland coast is called Kimi!!!

  2. Good move by Ferrari. I think overall a lot of drivers could use a good coach. Not only for technicalities but especially for mental support, a friendly person who’s got your back basically.

  3. This social media section is uninteresting. Keith tweets retweeted here, Racefans tweets retweeted here, Grosjean’s pictures everyday. Enough. We want news, we want to read. We don’t want a book full of pictures.

    1. Fully agree, @jeff1s
      But today that’s not even the biggest miss in the round-up.

    2. I disagree, it’s nice to have a little color next to the main articles, and not everything is worth its own story, so I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have them added to a daily round-up. Obviously the content they choose is subjective, but i wouldn’t like to have it eliminated from the site. Even if you don’t like it, it’s pretty much zero effort to scroll over…

      1. It can’t be easy to come up with a lot of new news, in the off-season, in a pandemic that has only gotten worse.

  4. Re Hailie Deegan: Well, not the first time this has happened on a stream…

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