The teams of Sir Frank Williams won seven drivers' titles.
Sir Frank Williams was one of the greatest Formula 1 team owners of all time and a man who became an icon through his determination to compete at the highest level despite a severe disability.
After breaking his neck in a car crash in 1986, Sir Frank was a quadriplegic, but he was able to return to work in 1992.
He went on to his greatest achievements after coming back into F1, a sport he loved with a passion matched by very few.
His team won seven drivers' titles and nine constructors' titles, but in recent years had fallen to the back of the grid, and in August 2020 it was sold to an investment group, and the family stepped aside.
Sir Frank Williams died at the age of 78.
Williams was consumed by F1 and did not love it. His health prevented him from being involved in the team for the last few years, but he lived in the factory. He set up a team that was his life.
Williams' first venture as a team owner was in 1969.
He was prepared to put his own comfort ahead of his team's success in order to keep his devotion to the sport high. He had to make a decision between keeping his private plane and building a wind tunnel, but he chose the wind tunnel.
Williams had to endure a number of difficult and painful years of financial struggle before finally establishing himself in the sport, which was no surprise to those who had studied his career closely.
Williams went through a number of different guises as a team owner, all of which were uncompetitive and financially-insecure.
At one point, he was so poor that he had to operate his business out of a phone booth.
The breakthrough came in 1977 when he and Patrick Head found money from the Middle East.
Head's first car for the team, FW06, established them as serious contender for the first time in 1978, thanks to increased resources allowed by Saudi money. Williams became the sport's pace-setting team after the new FW07 car was released in 1979.
They lost the world championship in 1979 due to poor reliability and an eccentric scoring system, but they rebounded in 1980, with Alan Jones winning the title.
Carlos Reutemann and Jones both missed out on a Williams double in 1981 before quitting the sport. In 1982, the Finn Keke Rosberg took the title despite the fact that the faster cars were let down by reliability and that the team lost both of its lead drivers in accidents that were remarkably similar.
The Honda-Williams partnership started slowly in 1984 with just one win, but gathered pace through 1985 before Williams emerged with a dominant car, the FW11.
The history of Williams.
Williams's future was in doubt before the season even started because of its founder's injury.
After a pre-season test in the south of France, Williams turned his car over and broke his neck when he hit Nelson Piquet. Peter Windsor, Williams's team manager, was in the car with him and was uninjured.
"I'm ashamed to say that it was the sixth or seventh accident I'd had in my life, and the car banged over a few times," Williams said.
I remember the pain in my neck. I thought that rolling over wasn't supposed to hurt that much. I tried to get myself out of the car, but I couldn't because it was upside down.
I knew I was going to have the big one, but I couldn't slow myself down.
He was 43 at the time of his injury. He would be lucky to live another 10 years, according to the doctors who pointed out the examples of other people with similar problems. He managed more than three times that, that says a lot about his determination and single-mindedness.
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Sir Frank's wife Ginny died of cancer. The daughter stepped away from the team in 2020.
"Retiring or selling the team would be a great daily antidote for the difficulties I would find myself in," he said. It's a great job, a competitive business, and always something to worry about. It can be quite healthy.
Williams never betrayed any sense of self-pity, depression or any of the other emotions that might be expected of someone in his situation, after months of recovery, through which Head kept the team going.
Ginny wrote a book about their marriage.
In it, she describes how, in the months after the accident, he talked about it very little, and simply said that they had had several good years of one kind of life together and now they just had to get used to a different one. That remark gave her a title that was apt for the book.
Head said that Frank was never one to be sorry for himself, even though he had some terrible moments thinking about the change in his life.
Frank was pragmatic about his injury and the problem he was dealing with.
His enthusiasm and positive attitude always overcome any difficulties he has.
Williams spent the first few months after his accident getting into a condition that would allow him to attend races again.
Williams adapted his lifestyle to give himself the best opportunities once he found out what the things that would cause him problems were. He's very disciplined about that sort of thing, and it's remarkable what he's done since then.
Frank has always been very private in his interactions with other people. Things just sort of carried on as normal once we got used to the fact that he was in a wheelchair.
Williams had better get on with his disability because it was his fault.
He would say that he had a wonderful life and wouldn't want to change anything.
Williams lost the title to McLaren in 1986 because drivers Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell split the points between them.
In 1987, with Williams back at work full time, they dominated, with Piquet's consistency trumping Mansell's speed and poorer reliability.
Before joining Williams in 1994, he drove for Toleman, Lotus and McLaren.
Williams lost their Honda engines at the end of the year and many feared for the future of the team without a factory engine supply and with a man in a wheelchair at the helm.
Williams was about to embark on their greatest success.
The 1992 and 1993 seasons were dominated by Williams and their partnership with Renault, which set new standards for F1, with cars bristling with technology such as active suspension, allowing first Mansell and then new signing Alain Prost to crush the opposition.
Williams's achievements were illustrated by this success. The team's investment in world-class engineering allowed them to win titles with famous drivers such as Jones, Prost and Hill.
Some of the sport's most brilliant engineers have been helped by Williams.
Adrian Newey, who was Williams' chief designer from 1991-1996, joined McLaren in 2005 and then masterminded the rise of Red Bull to four consecutive world titles.
Ross Brawn, who started his F1 career at Williams and went on to win two world titles with Benetton before moving to Ferrari and running their technical department, is now managing director of F1.
Williams regrets that his time working with Ayrton was short.
Williams was the first team to give a trial in F1 to the great Brazilian, but they decided against signing him. They joined forces 10 years later, but just three races into their Williams careers, they were killed in a crash.
Williams said that they let him down by giving him a car.
In Italy, Williams, Head and Newey faced manslaughter charges but were acquitted.
The partnership with BMW started in 2000 after the end of the partnership with the Renault team, but there was a brief hiatus with customer engines before that.
The relationship between BMW and Williams fell apart in 2005 and BMW set up its own team.
It was the end of an era for Williams. The last time a Williams took the chequered flag was in 2012 when Pastor Maldonado won the Spanish Grand Prix, eight years after Juan Pablo Montoya won the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Williams had a brief upturn in form in the year of the hybrid engine era, but then a slow decline followed, and the team finished last in the championship for the past three years.
Peter de Putron, an offshore banker, is the leader of Dorilton Capital and he wants to keep the family name.
It shows the significance of the achievements of a man who stamped his character on a team that seems to have the racing spirit required for success.
Williams is survived by his children.
