Photo: Ferrari
Ferrari has announced several changes in it young driver development programme for 2024.
Marco Matassa is leaving his role as head of the Ferrari Driver Academy, which he has held since 2018, and Jock Clear has been named as his successor. The Englishman has been working in Formula 1 since the 1980s, with stints at Benetton, Lotus, Williams and Mercedes before he joined Ferrari in 2015 in an engineering role.
While it is unclear if he was involved in the decisions, the first changes under his leadership is the departure of Arthur Leclerc and James Wharton from the FDA. The former, however, is “remaining part of the Ferrari family”.
Leclerc became a Ferrari junior in 2020, with his older brother Charles already one of the team’s race drivers, and since then he has been Formula Regional European Championship runner-up, FRegional Asia champion, an FIA Formula 3 race-winner and most recently a Formula 2 podium-finisher as he stepped up to the series this year.
Wharton was the winner of the inaugural FDA Scouting World Final in 2020, and his first year as a Ferrari junior was spent karting. He transitioned into Formula 4 last year, coming fifth in the final season of the German championship, then in 2023 won the F4 United Arab Emirates title, came second in Euro 4 and fourth in Italian F4.
Retaining their FDA places are Aurelia Nobels and Maya Weug, and Ferrari has announced both will race in the F4-spec F1 Academy series. Weug steps down from FREC, which she finished 17th in this year, and Nobels moves across from Euro 4.
The annual Scouting World Final was held for a fourth time this October, and the winner was anticipated to be revealed by the start of December. But there was no mention of the results of the event in any Ferrari communications.
Last week MP Motorsport announced it had signed karting superstar Rene Lammers for a multi-series F4 programme, and revealed he had won the Scouting World Final but not joined the FDA due to faltering negotiations with Ferrari.
A day later Ferrari put out its own statement confirming Lammers – son of former F1 racer Jan – had indeed won the event and stood out against his fellow finalists “because of his consistent pace, his car control and the mental strength he demonstrated throughout the evaluation camp”.
As for why Lammers was not joining the FDA, the prize for winning the final, Ferrari’s official line was:
In order to assess whether a driver is ready to start studying at the Academy, the engineers on the Ferrari young driver programme base their decisions on a series of parameters and from all the information gathered, they felt that neither Lammers nor the other candidates were ready yet. However, their progress will be closely monitored as they continue their racing programmes in 2024.
Matassa commented that “this was one of the closest Scouting World Finals we have ever witnessed, with so many drivers at the same level” and said of Lammers that “our paths might well cross in the future”.