“I think it is a testament to all of the academies,” said Clear in an appearance on the F1 Nation podcast (listen in the player below). “I think it’s probably a testament to the way the lower formulae have aligned themselves with F1 generally. We have very good relationships with the junior formula teams.
“You think, how on earth is it possible that Bearman can get in a car that he virtually hasn’t driven, qualify P11 and race to P7 in his very first event, having never tested that car? I think the simulators now are very good and that is a natural progression of the technology.
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“As soon as you say to an F1 team, ‘You can no longer go testing, you no longer have the opportunity to drive around Fiorano all day, every day’, then F1 teams will be quite aggressively developing some other way to do exactly the same job.
“How do we make sure we’re just as ready to perform? We find ways – and the simulator is the obvious way. The fidelity of simulators is at such a good level now that what we see with Colapinto and with Ollie is that, actually, when they get here, it’s not all alien to them.
“They know what to do with the tyres. They know what to expect. The circuits that they’ve never driven at, they have driven at. The virtual circuit that they drive on in the simulator is so good that actually they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, this is just like it’. It’s all there.”
