For Jock Clear, Charles Leclerc is the only driver truly capable of beating Max Verstappen

Charles Leclerc vs Max Verstappen 2026 will be a decidedly unusual season for Jock Clear. The expert English engineer has in fact recently left Ferrari and is preparing to experience his first Formula 1 world championship since time immemorial as a simple observer. The former performance coach of Charles Leclerc – but in his career he also worked with Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton, becoming the head of the Maranello Academy in his last years in red – is convinced that the Monegasque is a formidable talent, but is aware that at the moment all the spotlight is rightly focused on Max Verstappen. Jock Clear’s comment In an interview given to the CasinoHawks website, the 62-year-old Englishman praised the four-time world champion, while admitting that he doesn’t know him on a human level: “I don’t know anything about Max Verstappen and in a certain sense it’s a bit frustrating because from the outside he really seems like a great talent. If you try to calculate why he’s so much faster than the other Red Bull and Racing Bulls drivers, as an external observer you can’t close the circle, the math simply doesn’t they come back. You can’t help but come to the conclusion that Max is really special. What he did at the end of 2025 was just incredible. It’s the level that everyone else has to aspire to right now.” “I don’t think I’m belittling Lando Norris – adds the former Ferrari driver – by saying this. I think Lando is probably aware that he still has a lot to give and that next year he will be a stronger driver, with the security of having the number one on his car. But he still has to grow before reaching the same level as Max.” Congratulations to Leclerc, however, are not lacking: “Charles can become world champion. If we look at him this year, and no offense to the guys at McLaren, I believe that Leclerc is the only driver capable of competing with Verstappen at the moment. It might seem unfair towards Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who are fighting at that level. But if I had two cars and one was Max’s and they asked me who I would want in the other to try to beat him, I would choose Charles Leclerc.”