DEREK BELL
The Legend
It isn’t easy losing a friend. Without wishing to turn this column into an obituary, I feel I must pay my own very personal tribute to Frank Williams, who died in November. He was a mate. I liked and respected him enormously. I knew him almost from the start of my career in motorsport, and, as such, we had shared history. You will no doubt have read many articles celebrating his remarkable career, but please allow me to tell you about the Frank I knew.
I got into Formula 3 in 1966. This was the category in which you needed to excel if you wanted to graduate to Formula 1. Around that period, there was an aura around a group of guys who shared a house together and who seemed to be racing just about everywhere, every weekend. There was Charles Lucas, who was incredibly wealthy and is perhaps better known as a team owner. There was his great friend Piers Courage, the American Roy Pike, who was one of the benchmark drivers at that time, and Jonathan Williams. And then there was Frank.
Frank raced cars. He was a good qualifier but not a great finisher, and he soon realised that his talents lay elsewhere. He was one of the most determined people I have ever met, and everyone in Formula 3 knew him. Frank was a wheeler-dealer, a man who always seemed to be able to obtain the latest must-have engine part, bodywork or so on. He also used to cover enormous distances buying and selling cars. In those days, if you brought anything into or out of a country you needed a carnet. You had to account for everything. You couldn’t even leave the country with more than £50.
Frank often found a way of bypassing all that. One story that always tickled me surrounded him travelling to Denmark in his old VW pick-up to collect a Cosworth MAE engine, then to take it up to Norway to sell. Having made it that far, he had to find a way of smuggling it out of the country. He hit upon a genius ruse: he bought a load of Christmas trees, covered the motor in its entirety, and bluffed his way at the border crossing. That was him all over.
I suspect he probably bought another car while he was there and brought that back, too. He often used to acquire bent Formula 3 cars, usually from the Continent, and then have them straightened out in an array of lockup garages. The man who fixed them was Tony Trimmer, against whom I raced in the Aurora F1 series in the mid-to-late-1970s. The point is, Frank wasn’t doing this to get rich, it was a means to an end. He wanted to reach the top in motorsport, which meant Formula 1.
He moved up the order, bit by bit, deal by deal, but never had any money. It all went on racing. He operated out of a phone box – that was his office. And you certainly had a fight on your hands to get paid, as I found out when I raced for him in 1971, but you never got angry with him because he was such a character. I did some Formula 2 races with him that year, and picked up a few decent results, and also contested the non-championship Argentine Grand Prix in a March 701, which I seem to remember had been Chris Amon’s old car.
Again, that was Frank all over. For years, it was a case of enter any car in any race for any driver just to stay in the game. He and Patrick Head made for a formidable combination, and I was so happy that it all came good after they joined forces in 1977. I only wish I had been racing for Frank when his cars were winning World Championships. What he achieved during the 1980s and ’90s in particular was remarkable, especially given his life-changing injuries following that ghastly road accident in 1986. More than anything, it pleased me that someone from our crowd had made it big; became the new establishment.
I would also like to mention how sorry I was to hear about Tony Dron’s passing, which occurred only a few days prior to Frank’s. He was a fellow Octane columnist for a long time, and a great journalist. You always trusted what he wrote. Tony was also a super driver, and one I remember well from when he was driving for Ralph Broad in the British Saloon Car Championship. I joined Broadspeed in 1976 as part of Jaguar’s European Touring Car Championship campaign. The car wasn’t ready until halfway into the season, so we were obliged to race Triumph Dolomite Sprints in the meantime. I cannot say I particularly enjoyed the experience, but Tony extracted the most from them in the UK.
We were also team-mates in the works Porsche 924 Carreras at Le Mans in 1980. He was always good company and someone who enjoyed life to the full. That, in itself, made him a winner in my book.
‘FRANK WILLIAMS WAS ONE OF THE MOST DETERMINED PEOPLE I HAVE EVER MET’