Headline: Jock Clear: Hamilton’s Ferrari bruises prove F1 isn’t plug-and-play
Jock Clear has seen Lewis Hamilton at his best and at his most human. And after watching the seven-time champion’s first season in red play out without a single podium, the ex-Ferrari performance engineer says the struggle was not only real — it was a reminder of how hard this sport really is.
Clear, who worked alongside Hamilton at Mercedes in 2013–14 and later returned to Ferrari in 2015, was reunited with him at Maranello last year before leaving the team mid-season. He’s adamant that Hamilton’s 2025 looked exactly like what happens when an all-time great walks into a different culture, different car, and a team still finding its feet.
“People forget it doesn’t happen overnight,” Clear said in an interview with a betting outlet. He even pointed back to Michael Schumacher’s early Ferrari years as context: the winning came, but the titles took time. Clear’s broader point? If Hamilton had rolled in and steamrollered to an eighth crown immediately, it would’ve made the job look far too easy.
Ferrari didn’t make life easy, either. The team slogged through its first winless campaign since 2021, while Charles Leclerc kept the scoreboard respectable with seven podiums and a pole. Hamilton, 41, ended up 86 points behind his teammate and, for the first time in his F1 career, went a full season without stepping on the rostrum. You don’t need a stopwatch to know that stings.
Clear argues that adaptation is still an underappreciated performance metric in modern F1. He cited Carlos Sainz’s own arc after swapping Ferrari red for Williams blue: a painful opening stretch of 2025, then a late-season reset that yielded two podiums once the fit improved. The lesson, he says, is consistent across the grid — speed follows familiarity.
“I know Lewis really had a tough time last year processing how difficult the challenge was,” Clear said. “But time is the key. He’s not the sort to give up because one year bit hard. He’ll double down, help drive the development, and see the project through.”
That chimes with Hamilton’s own mood music. Marking his 41st birthday, he called 2025 “very draining” and told fans he was using the winter to disconnect and reset. “The time for change is now,” he wrote, promising new routines, growth and a step-by-step climb back. It read like a veteran drawing a line under a year he won’t frame on the wall — and preparing to go again.
Inside Ferrari, there’s little appetite for melodrama. Leclerc was the sharper point in 2025, but the team knows bedding-in takes time — especially with someone as methodical as Hamilton, who has always done his best work when the car starts to bend to him rather than the other way around. That takes hours in the simulator, days in the wind tunnel, and a few tough Sundays to map what the driver really needs.
Clear, for his part, sees promise in the long game. His contention isn’t that Hamilton will inevitably paint the Scuderia’s future red with trophies; it’s that nothing about last year looked abnormal. A champion didn’t forget how to drive. A champion discovered how unforgiving it is to swap philosophies and learn new reflexes at 300 kph.
Ferrari’s 2025 left bruises, no question. But it also set the table for a proper second act. Hamilton heads into his 20th F1 season with the scoreboard against him, Leclerc operating at a high baseline, and a factory determined not to spend another year watching others collect the silverware. The odds aren’t sentimental. But then, neither is the man in car No. 44.
If you wanted proof that F1 still demands the grind, you got it last year. If you wanted a hint of what happens when Hamilton’s grind starts to pay off, watch what he and Ferrari do next.
