F1 legend reveals how Michael Schumacher relationship was repaired

Schumacher after the 2012 Hungarian Grand Prix — Photo: © IMAGO

Michael Schumacher

F1 legend reveals how Michael Schumacher relationship was repaired

Jock Clear worked with Schumacher at Mercedes in the 2010s

Chris Deeley

Sunday 26 April 2026 13:57

Former Mercedes and Williams engineer Jock Clear has revealed that his opinion of Michael Schumacher flipped 180 degrees once he got the chance to work with the seven-time F1 champion.

Clear, who also had a long spell at Ferrari later in his career, only worked with the German great in his three-year racing comeback at Mercedes in the early 2010s.

The British engineer initially worked with Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes garage rather than Schumacher, but switched to the other side of the garage after the first year when it was clear that he and Rosberg didn't gel as a partnership.

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Speaking to Peter Windsor, Clear admitted that he had gone into the partnership with a pretty low opinion of Schumacher after his season-ending crashes into his title rivals in both 1994 and '97, the latter into Jacques Villeneuve, who had Clear as his race engineer at the time.

The '94 crash into Damon Hill, with his Benetton about to be retired from the race with a broken suspension, infamously secured Schumacher's first title. Things worked out differently in '97, with Schumacher bouncing off the side of Villeneuve's Williams and into the gravel as he tried desperately to keep his one-point championship lead.

As it was, he retired on the spot and the Canadian driver went on to cruise home in third place to lift the trophy – and to add insult to injury, Schumacher was stripped of his second place in the championship over the incident.

Schumacher engineer: He is a lovely, lovely human being

That was very much on Clear's mind when the two were employed by Mercedes, but the veteran engineer has now revealed that his opinion of the racing great completely changed in their two years together.

He explained: “Michael immediately said ‘well if Nico doesn’t want him as his race engineer, I’ll have him'. So I crossed the table and went to the other side, we brought Bono [Peter Bonnington] on as a race engineer, and Ross [Brawn] said ‘mentor Bono and get him up to speed as a race engineer and Michael likes the way you work so see how it goes’.

“And we got on famously, we really did, it was a great triumvirate for those couple of years with myself and Bono and Michael. It was a real eye opener to see how a seven-time world champion goes about their business and he just knew how to deal with people.

“So going from not having a great deal of respect as a sporting player, that became completely irrelevant in the following years because I had a huge amount of respect for him as a man, as a human being.

“He is a lovely, lovely human being, he knows how to treat people, a huge amount of respect for people that do a good job for him and treat him well and he treats them well and that’s how it should be.”

F1 Mercedes Michael Schumacher Jock Clear