Sir Frank Williams: From carpet warehouse to top of the podium
Sir Frank Williams was one of the most remarkable figures in British sport. He took his motor racing team from an empty carpet warehouse to the summit of Formula One, oversaw 114 victories, a combined 16 drivers’ and constructors’ world championships and became the sport’s longest-serving team boss.
Williams’ story is made all the more extraordinary by the horrificcarcrashhesufferedin France in 1986 which left him with injuries so devastating doctors considered turning off his life-support machine. But his wife Virginia ordered that her husband be kept alive and his determination and courage enabled him to continue with the love of his life, albeit from a wheelchair.
He would remain as team principal for a further 34 years, before Williams was sold to American investors in August 2020 for £136 million.
Born in South Shields in 1942, to an RAF officer and a headmistress, Williams was educated at St Joseph’s College, a private boarding school in Dumfries, where he became obsessed with cars following a ride in a Jaguar XK150.
A travelling salesman by day, Williams fulfilled his racing ambitions at the weekend and, aged just 24, he launched his own team, Frank Williams Racing Cars.
Four years later, they were competing in Formula Two, and with flatmate and closest friendpierscouragebehindthe wheel, Williams graduated to
F1 in 1969 using a second-hand Brabham.
However, at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix, Courage ran off the track, one of his front wheels hit his helmet, and his car burst into flames. Courage’s grisly death in a car bearing his name left Williams devastated. Broke and with spiralling debts, he reluctantly sold 60 per cent of his team to Walter Wolf in 1975.
Later, after severing ties with Wolf,williamssetupshopatan oldcarpetwarehouseindidcot,
Oxfordshire.joinedbynowlegendary engineer Patrick Head, Australian driver Alan Jones and with Saudi funding, Williams Grand Prix Engineering became a tour de force.
Atthe1979britishgrandprix, Jones registered Williams’ first polepositionbeforeteam-mate Clay Regazzoni took the team’s maiden win a day later.
In 1980, Jones delivered Williams their first title. The team also won back-to-back constructors’ championships,
while Keke Rosberg was the drivers’ champion in 1982.
After his life-changing crash in 1986, Williams was back at the helm within nine months.
Over the ensuing 11 years, five furtherdrivers’championships –includingthosefornigelmansell and Damon Hill – as well as seven constructors’ titles, followed.
Williams was knighted in 1999. but his team were never able to replicate their 1980s and ’90s heyday. He stepped back in
2013, the year in which his wife died, allowing daughter Claire to assume the day-to-day running of the team.
At last year’s Italian Grand Prix, the Williams family contested its 739th and final race aftersellingtodoriltoncapital.
Clairesaid:“frankhasbeenin Formula One a whole lot longer than most people in this paddock. My dad leaves an incrediblelegacyonthissport.wewill always remember that and we will always be proud of that.”