Jock Clear on Jacques Villeneuve: the misunderstood champion who speaks his mind. Jock Clear reflects on working with Jacques Villeneuve: honesty and brilliance.

Clear and Villeneuve’s 1997 title triumph

At the end of the 2025 season, Jock Clear concluded his long stint at Ferrari, which began back in 2014. The British engineer joined Maranello after working with numerous teams, achieving multiple successes along the way. However, some of Clear’s fondest memories date back to his time at Williams in the mid-1990s, when he served as the race engineer for Jacques Villeneuve. He was closely involved in the Canadian driver’s journey to the 1997 World Championship.

“A misunderstood driver with good intentions”

“I really enjoyed working as an engineer for Jacques Villeneuve,” Jock Clear told CasinoHawks. “We’ve stayed in close contact, and our families are very close as well. I believe he was a very misunderstood driver. Sometimes Jacques doesn’t hold back from saying things that perhaps some of us wouldn’t, but he always does it with good intentions. He’s a genuinely lovely person. It’s incredible how often he says things that annoy you or that simply don’t make sense, but when you think about them later, you realize he’s right.”

Respect from the paddock legends

Jock Clear recounted some of Villeneuve’s conversations with Williams technical director Patrick Head: “He had some discussions with Patrick Head back when he was at Williams, and on a few occasions Adrian Newey stepped in, saying: ‘No Patrick, I know you think he’s talking nonsense, but Jacques is actually right.’ Adrian had been in America and seen what they were doing with the Indy cars, and he would simplify and explain Jacques’ points to Patrick Head. Jacques is an incredibly intelligent person and a genuinely delightful character, though he can sometimes irritate people.”

Jock Clear’s retrospective offers a fascinating look into the internal friction that often fuels championship-winning teams. By highlighting the bridge Adrian Newey built between Villeneuve’s American racing logic and Patrick Head’s rigorous British engineering, Clear reminds us that the best drivers are often those who challenge the status quo. As Clear moves on from his decade-long stint at Ferrari, these lessons in handling “misunderstood” geniuses remain as relevant as ever in a sport where technical honesty is the only real currency for success.