Tom Clark

Why organisations work with Tom Clark

• He works inside one of the most demanding performance environments in elite sport, around 250 days a year on the road with an F1 driver, and brings that operating reality directly into the room.
• His doctoral research at Liverpool John Moores University on jet lag and travel fatigue in F1 gives him a defensible scientific position on a topic most peak-performance speakers handle anecdotally.
• He has been part of a Hungarian Grand Prix victory at the level of preparation and recovery, so the marginal-gains argument is grounded in a specific outcome rather than a general claim.
• He translates Hintsa Performance methodology, the system that shaped modern F1 conditioning, into language and tools senior leaders can apply to their own travel and decision schedules.

Biography highlights

• Head of Performance for Esteban Ocon at Alpine F1, since 2020.
• Professional Doctorate in Applied Sport and Exercise Science, Liverpool John Moores University, focused on jet lag and travel fatigue in elite motorsport.
• MSc Athletic Development and Peak Performance, Solent University; BSc Health and Exercise Science, First Class Honours, Solent University.
• Former performance coach at Hintsa Performance, the consultancy behind much of modern F1 athlete development.
• Worked alongside Esteban Ocon at his maiden Formula One race win, the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix.
• Adapted the LJMU Jet Lag Questionnaire into a digital monitoring platform used across an F1 season.

Biography

A Formula 1 season runs to roughly two dozen races across five continents. The driver is expected to perform at the limit of human reaction time on each one, often within forty-eight hours of landing. Tom Clark is the person who designs the conditions under which that is possible.

As Head of Performance for Esteban Ocon at Alpine F1, Clark is responsible for the sleep, training, nutrition, and recovery system that holds a driver’s output steady across a calendar engineered for fatigue. He came into the sport through Hintsa Performance, the consultancy that built the modern playbook for F1 conditioning, and joined Alpine as Senior Performance Coach in 2020. He was part of the team at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix, Ocon’s first Formula One race victory.

His doctoral research at Liverpool John Moores University, supervised by Dr Ben Edwards, focuses on jet lag and travel fatigue in elite motorsport. With LJMU colleagues, Clark adapted the university’s Jet Lag Questionnaire into a digital tool used across the F1 season, turning a clinical instrument into operating data. That research connects directly to what senior business audiences face: cumulative time-zone shifts, compressed sleep, and the gap between feeling capable and being capable.

What distinguishes him from the wider peak-performance category is the specificity. He is not a former athlete reflecting on a finished career. He is an operator describing a system he runs every weekend, with a named driver, in measurable conditions, and grounding it in published science.

Key speaking topics

• Performance science in elite motorsport
• Jet lag and travel fatigue in high-stakes environments
• Circadian rhythms and sleep as performance variables
• Marginal gains and Formula 1 preparation methodology
• Mental resilience under continuous competition
• Routine design for sustained executive output

Ideal for

• C-suite leaders and senior executives whose schedules involve frequent long-haul travel and sustained decision load
• Sales and commercial leadership teams operating across multiple time zones
• High-performance teams in finance, professional services, and global operations where output cannot drop with the calendar
• Leadership development programmes drawing on elite-sport methodology

Audience outcomes

• A working understanding of how circadian disruption affects judgement, mood, and reaction time, and what the data actually shows
• Specific protocols used inside an F1 team to manage jet lag, sleep, and recovery across long-haul travel
• A clearer line between preparation and performance, drawn from Formula 1 race weekends rather than business analogy
• Practical adjustments to routine, light exposure, training, and nutrition that senior leaders can apply inside an existing schedule
• An honest sense of where marginal gains move the needle and where they do not