Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Clear 'excited' to work with Vettel after Schumacher praise

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Jock Clear says he is "excited" to work with Sebastian Vettel following past praise of the Ferrari driver from Michael Schumacher.

Vettel joined Ferrari ahead of the 2015 season and promptly finished third in the drivers' championship as the only other man to win a race other than the two Mercedes drivers. Clear has since also moved to Maranello in a senior engineering role and says it was Schumacher's comments about the four-time world champion which stuck with him.

"I knew a little bit about him before," Clear said when asked about working with Vettel. "Having worked with Michael [Schumacher] a few years ago, he was a good friend of Michael's and I remember well that Michael spoke very highly of him and we were all working together.

"So I was excited about this opportunity as I was about working with Kimi [Raikkonen], and Seb has been everything I was expecting of him. He is a four-time world champion and that shines through whenever you see him in the garage, in the car, in the factory, or in the simulator. He knows how to bring the best out of people. He knows how to drag the team forward.

"He knows how to communicate and those aspects of being an F1 racing driver are so critical to the modern F1 team driving forward. It is a team effort and they do carry a huge responsibility of motivation and direction, and I know that Seb understands that.

"You can see that what be bring to the part is just invaluable and that is what singles out the world champions from the other guys in the pit lane. They just know how it works and Seb has all of that and more."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.