His career in motorsport began at
Lola Cars, where he worked as a design engineer before moving to the position of head of composite design at
Benetton Formula in 1989. In 1992 he worked as senior designer at
Leyton House Racing, then joined
Team Lotus where he became
Johnny Herbert's race engineer in 1994. When Lotus collapsed at the end of the year, he transferred to
Williams F1 and engineered
David Coulthard, who won his first Grand Prix in
Portugal and finished third in the
drivers' championship.
Jacques Villeneuve joined Williams in 1996 and Clear was his race engineer; the Canadian won the
world championship the following year under Clear's guidance. When Villeneuve moved to
British American Racing for the 1999 season, his engineer followed suit. The relationship continued until the
2003 Japanese Grand Prix, when Villeneuve walked out on the eve of the race.
Takuma Sato took up the vacant seat and drove to sixth position on his racing debut with the team. Clear worked with Sato again in 2004–2005 and then with
Rubens Barrichello from 2006 to 2009. Barrichello won the
European and
Italian Grands Prix and finished in third place in the World Championship. In November 2007, Clear was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering by
Heriot-Watt University "in recognition of his outstanding success in applying engineering science in the most demanding and competitive environments and as a role model to young engineers." In December 2014, it was announced that Clear had been signed by Ferrari, and would move to the team for the
2015 Formula One season. ==References==