Sir Frank Williams,
1942-2021
Sir Frank Williams, the founder of the Williams Formula One team, has died aged 79. After a brief stint as a Formula Three driver with Jochen Rindt, Williams bought a small fleet of Formula Two and Three cars and established a business model renting them out to paying drivers in search of experience and start money.
For 1969, Williams sold his Formula Two and Three assets and moved into Formula One, initially running Piers Courage in a privateer Brabham, then forming successive partnerships with Italian firms De Tomaso, Politoys and Iso, by which point Williams was designing his own cars. After a deal with Walter Wolf resulted in Wolf owning the team, Williams and chief engineer Patrick Head set up their own team under Williams’ own name in 1977.
Meeting instant success, Williams effectively inherited Lotus’s mantle as the leading British Formula One force in the Eighties. Over the course of 15 years, Williams won nine constructors’ championships and seven drivers’ championships, despite Frank Williams suffering a car crash in 1986 that left him confined to a wheelchair.
Away from Formula One, Williams helped develop cars for other manufacturers, including the MG Metro 6R4. In 1994 Williams expanded his operations into the BTCC with Williams Touring Car Engineering, winning the Championship with the Renault Laguna in 1997. In recognition of his work with Renault in Formula One, Williams was awarded the Legion d’honneur by the French state. He also masterminded the 1999-2000 BMW V12 LMR, securing the marque’s only Le Mans victory.
Although he had a knack for nurturing talent, introducing the likes of David Coulthard, Jenson Button and Jason Plato, Williams’ kindliness belied a ruthlessness that often saw star drivers such as Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill dropped abruptly in favour of new faces. After some successes with BMW engines in the early 2000s, Williams struggled to maintain success, and Sir Frank ceded control of the team to his daughter Claire in 2013.