Formula 1 has seen many a great racing team grace its circuits and seasons over the years, and perhaps none evoke memories of greatness and success more than that of the Williams F1 team.
The Formula 1 team was founded by Frank Williams and Patrick Head back in 1977, and Frank would go on to serve at the helm of his team, with daughter Claire as deputy team principal, right up until 2020 when Williams was sold to Dorilton Capital, the team now being run by new CEO and Team Principal Jost Capito as of 2021.
Along the way though, Frank, daughter Claire and many other members of the team were witnesses to some extraordinary success in Formula 1. During the 1980s and the 1990s, the Williams team was as its rivals feared, and they were more often than not always in the mix for the world championship and race victories. The team has sadly not won a race since 2012, and not stood on the podium since 2017. The new ownership though will hopefully, over time, right those wrongs, and help the team relive the glory days, of the dynasty that Frank built.
Williams Early Beginnings
Like most Formula 1 outfits, the Williams team began from what were really humble beginnings. Frank Williams founded it in 1977, after an earlier F1 operation, Frank Williams Racing Cars/Wolf-Williams Racing, failed to get off the ground. But the team ran a March chassis in 1977, and it wasn’t until 1978 that it built its first car from the ground up, before it won its first race just a further year later in the hands of Clay Regazzoni at the 1979 British Grand Prix. Following that, the team stunned for Grand Prix field with a 1-2 at the next race in Germany, then taking its third win in a row in Austria and a fourth in a row with victory in the Netherlands, with the hat trick of wins being achieved by Alan Jones.
Jones won again at the penultimate race of the year, but it was 1980 when title glory came to the team, with Jones winning the first drivers title for the team and Williams taking its first constructors' title as well, with an astonishing 120 points which was twice that of their nearest competitors, Ligier. Keke Rosberg won the title for the team in 1982, but it was the later years of the 1980s that really saw the team rise to the forefront of F1 consistently.
The Honda Years And The 1990s
After orchestrating a Honda deal for 1984, Williams soon became the team to beat. Nelson Piquet won the title in 1987 before a lean year with Judd engines in 1988 yielded no wins. A Renault deal was secured from 1989, and 1991 was the year things picked up again properly for Williams as they challenged McLaren-Honda and Ayrton Senna hard for the 1991 title, before succeeding with Mansell in the 1992 world championship in the dominant FW14B.
The team enjoyed spectacular success in the 1990s. The team and Alain Prost won the championship in 1993, with Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve winning the titles in 1996 and 1997. This dominance was interrupted by Michael Schumacher in Benetton in 1994 and 1995, the former year though being marred by the tragic loss of Ayrton Senna who had joined the team for 1994, and a controversial clash at the season finale in Adelaide, where Hill was effectively taken out by Schumacher after the German damaged his car. Hill lost the title that year by one point.
Leaner Years
The late 1990s and later decades didn’t yield much success for Williams, though. Losing their Renault engines and settling for Supertec’s, Williams did not win a race from 1997 up until 2001, when the team had become a BMW factory outfit with Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya leading the way for the team up until 2004. Montoya challenged for the title in 2003 but left Williams for McLaren in 2005, not before winning his last race for the team in Brazil 2004, the season finale.
From then on, Williams wouldn’t win a race until the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix. Drivers such as Nico Rosberg, Nico Hulkenburg, and Mark Webber all wrestled with uncompetitive cars as Williams became customers of first Cosworth, then Toyota, before Pastor Maldonado sensationally won the Spanish GP of 2012, which is still the last time a Williams car won a race as of 2012. As F1 entered the turbo-hybrid era, things did pick up. Felipa Massa and Valtteri Bottas helped the team to two third-place finishes in the championship in 2014 and 2015 in the iconic Martini liveried car.
Returning To The Points
Things slowly declined for the team, however, from 2016 onwards. Williams finished just fifth in that years' championship, and then slumped further down the field as the years went on, finishing last from 2018 to 2020. However, since George Russell arrived at the team in 2019 things have been looking up slowly, to the point Williams scored a double points finish for the first time in three years at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix, with Nicolas Latifi in 7th and Russell in 8th. This puts Williams eighth in the world championship, which will come as a massive financial and morale-boosting result for the team should they finish the season in eighth.
Frank and daughter Claire Williams left the team in 2020 after it was sold to Dorilton Capital, and since then the new owners have given the team a much more secure financial footing and a new drive to succeed with former VW rally boss Jost Capito at the helm. The dynasty that Frank built has certainly suffered over the last few decades, with some patchy results, but the result in Hungary showed the progress that Williams is making. The 2022 F1 season with the new regulations offers Williams its best opportunity in years to recapture some of its former glory, and perhaps stand on the podium once again.
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