{"id":242217,"date":"2025-07-06T08:21:19","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T08:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/242217\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T08:21:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T08:21:19","slug":"how-williams-f1s-ultimate-underdog-found-success-and-might-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/242217\/","title":{"rendered":"How Williams, F1\u2019s ultimate underdog, found success \u2014 and might again"},"content":{"rendered":"

The two-tone Williams pops at any Formula One circuit.<\/p>\n

The nose is covered in a deeper blue, called Heritage Blue, and as your eyes track the car towards the rear, it blends with a lighter blue, called Atlassian Blue \u2014\u00a0a nod to the past and present of the rebuilding team.<\/p>\n

Williams Racing is one of F1\u2019s classic teams. Only two other current constructors, Ferrari and McLaren, have been around longer. It\u2019s just two seasons shy of being on the grid for half of a century and boasts nine constructors\u2019 championships and seven drivers\u2019 titles, all of which took place in the 1980s and \u201890s. After years as a backmarker,\u00a0Williams is entering a new era, one where points finishes are more consistent and infrastructure is improving.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s an era still rooted in its origins.<\/p>\n

Former Williams Racing deputy team principal Claire Williams told\u00a0The Athletic her father, Frank Williams, \u201cscrabbled and fought for a decade to set his beloved team up.\u201d During its most successful era, Frank fought for his life after a car accident that left him tetraplegic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a team that\u2019s kind of seen always as an underdog that punches above its weight,\u201d Claire says.<\/p>\n

The origin story of Williams<\/p>\n

Frank Williams didn\u2019t come from a rich family steeped in motorsports. He was\u00a0raised in a single-parent household until the age of five when, according to Claire, he \u201cwas sent to boarding school run by monks.\u201d And that is where Frank fell in love with racecars.<\/p>\n

Because his mother couldn\u2019t pick him up on holidays, Claire said one of Frank\u2019s friends \u201ctook pity on him.\u201d The friend\u2019s father worked as a used car salesman and would take Frank out in one of the cars each time for a trip around the block. Claire said. \u201cFrom there, my dad just fell in love with cars, and he left school in his mid teens, and he started hitchhiking around the UK in order to get to see racing cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Money was tight \u2014 he\u2019d climb under a track\u2019s catch fencing during the night, avoiding the circuits\u2019 admission fees. He eventually borrowed a car from his mother to go racing. Claire said Frank \u201cwould scrabble together money here, there and everywhere \u2014 doing deals, selling old car parts, whatever he could in order to fund his racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut he wasn\u2019t particularly great in the race car, so he decided to become a constructor, and that\u2019s when he set up his own Formula 1 team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the 1960s, privateer entries weren\u2019t unusual, and Frank Williams Racing Cars entered the 1969 F1 World Championship with a Brabham BT26A and Piers Courage at the wheel. That\u2019s the year Frank felt Williams Racing\u2019s history began, Claire said.<\/p>\n

Frank Williams Racing Cars saw some early F1 success, like a second-place finish at the 1969 Monaco GP, but Courage suffered a fatal crash in 1970 during the Dutch GP. Multiple issues unfolded and crippled the team. Claire said her father, Frank, never really told her much about this first team, as he wasn\u2019t one to dwell on history, but she did know about the struggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was probably seven or eight people involved in it. Teams back then are very different to what they are now,\u201d Claire explained. \u201cMy dad, he didn\u2019t have any money. It was my mother that was bankrolling the team back in those days, because she had a bit of money behind her. They sold everything in order to keep that team going, and a lot of my father\u2019s employees weren\u2019t paid. They just did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

To pay them, Frank would give his employees one of his watches or suits. Claire said, \u201cMy father was really seen in not particularly favorable light, shall we say, by his fellow team principals in the paddock. I think he was seen as a bit of a joke, and the whole team was seen as a bit of a joke. But, you know, I think my dad really had the last laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Williams speaks with driver Henri Pescarolo in 1971 (Bernard Cahier\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Canadian millionaire Walter Wolf took over as majority owner of the team in 1976, and Frank left the following year and formed Williams Grand Prix Engineering with technical guru Patrick Head.<\/p>\n

Head brought the technical brilliance while Frank brought the leadership and vision for the team. In 1978, Williams Grand Prix Engineering\u2019s first in-house car (the FW06) made its debut, and it was competitive, as it qualified in every race and reached the podium once, at the United States Grand Prix. Claire said, \u201cThe competition were like, \u2018Wow, what has happened to Williams?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It became a two-car team a year later, and Williams secured its first victory with its ground-effect FW07, which replaced the FW06 partially through the 1979 season. Clay Regazzoni stood on the top step of the podium at the British Grand Prix<\/a> after teammate Alan Jones suffered an engine failure while leading the race.<\/p>\n

Williams went on to win four of the next five races and finish the season second in the constructors\u2019 championship. That breakthrough year gave way to a dominant team working in harmony. F1\u2019s history is filled with moments like this, such as the recent Red Bull run or the Mercedes era in 2014-2021. For Williams, its moment began in the 80s \u2014 and it came at the right time.<\/p>\n

\u201cUp until that point, bailiffs were coming around weekly. There was no money,\u201d Claire said. \u201cIt was not like Formula One today. The very fact that Williams survived is probably thanks to my mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Punching above their weight\u2019<\/p>\n

Powered by Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann, Williams took the constructors\u2019 championship in both 1980 and \u201881, and the team\u2019s first drivers\u2019 world championship victory came from Jones in 1980, while Reutemann missed out on the 1981 title by one point. Ferrari, though, came roaring back the next two seasons, but Williams stayed competitive.<\/p>\n

Nigel Mansell came in 1985, the team\u2019s first British driver. Partnered with Nelson Piquet, they helped Williams win the constructors\u2019 championship the next two seasons. In 1986, Piquet and Mansell shared the podium seven times across 16 grands prix. But then McLaren lured Honda away in 1988, leading to a downturn in performance for Williams ahead of what Claire described as \u201cone of the most standout decades for Williams.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team completely dominated, and that was a case of punching above their weight,\u201d Claire continued. \u201cFerrari was in the sport, McLaren was in the sport, and Williams didn\u2019t have the same resources, certainly, but Frank and Patrick just created the most extraordinary team that literally just ate everybody else up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Head brought a new name to the team in the 1990s: the now-legendary designer Adrian Newey<\/a>. Together, they designed a car that kept Williams in its winning ways and capable of contending for a constructors\u2019 championship. The FW14B became one of the team\u2019s strongest challengers and \u201cintroduced traction control and an improved cutting-edge active suspension system,\u201d according to the team. Mansell and Riccardo Patrese secured all but one pole position in 1992 and won 10 out of the 16 grands prix en route to another championship, while Mansell won the drivers\u2019 title.<\/p>\n

Despite the success, the driver lineup changed heading into \u201893, with Mansell exiting F1 and Patrese going to Benetton. Three-time world champion Alain Prost and Damon Hill took over, and Prost thrived \u2014 winning his debut Williams race and securing 13 pole positions. The Prost-Hill partnership was as strong as Mansell-Patrese, and when Prost retired, Ayrton Senna stepped in, starting in 1994. But Senna died in a crash during the San Marino Grand Prix that year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Prost and Hill took Williams to new heights in the 1990s (Paul-Henri Cahier\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Williams brought home its third consecutive constructors\u2019 championship.\u00a0The team\u2019s dominance continued with two more constructors\u2019 championships, in 1996 and 1997. But things began to change, starting in 1998. Newey departed, and Renault left the sport at the end of the 1997 season. Williams endured two winless seasons to close out the decade.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 two standout decades came at a difficult time for the family, as Frank suffered a spinal cord injury in a road car accident near Paul Ricard Circuit in 1986. According to Claire, her father \u201cshould have died\u201d in the accident, \u201cand he did die three times in hospital, and yet he came back, and he led his team to more success from a wheelchair than before the accident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Building a successful team isn\u2019t simple or quick. Development takes time. You can spend weeks developing a part and it does nothing in the wind tunnel, which means the team goes back to the drawing board. Claire said, \u201cThese race cars are made up of 20,000 odd parts and aerodynamics \u2014 which is the greatest, most single darkest art there is \u2014 and if you don\u2019t get it right, it is not the work of a moment to fix it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAero, it is the result of more than 1,000 people working together in complete harmony. It\u2019s like an orchestra.\u201d<\/p>\n

When someone messes up a note in an orchestra, the audience notices \u2014 and it\u2019s the same in F1, Claire said. She added, \u201cUnless every member of a racing team is operating at absolute peak performance all at the same time, you don\u2019t win races and you don\u2019t win championships, and if you get it wrong, you can get it really badly wrong, and it can take you an awfully long time to get back up.\u201d<\/p>\n

From \u2018real instability\u2019 to leading the midfield<\/p>\n

Claire began working for the team in the 2000s, and privateer entries began phasing out, as major automanufacturers began investing. Williams brought back BMW as its engine partner, and, as Claire said, it should\u2019ve worked.<\/p>\n

On paper, it looked strong. But \u201cthere are a number of reasons why it didn\u2019t go in the way that I think either party wanted,\u201d Claire said. They split by 2006, and the team began struggling.<\/p>\n

Williams jumped from engine partner to engine partner, like Toyota, Cosworth and Renault, and the 2008 global financial crisis impacted the sport, especially with sponsorships. As the decades progressed, different CEOs came in and out, and Head eventually left the team in 2011. Personnel and driver lineups changed, but it was never a matter of whether Williams would stop existing.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the only team at the time that struggled. McLaren faced a downturn in performance as well but has since rebounded. Williams, though, hasn\u2019t recovered as quickly.<\/p>\n

But as Claire said, \u201cWe had real instability.\u201d<\/p>\n

From a financial perspective, the delta between the teams wasn\u2019t quite felt until around 2015 or so, at least in Williams\u2019 case. Claire took over as deputy team principal in 2013, and Williams partnered with Mercedes for its power unit a year later. This initially improved the team\u2019s performance. It secured multiple podium finishes in 2014, but the differences in spending power between the larger teams and smaller organizations, such as Williams, then impacted performance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Claire Williams guided her father\u2019s team through its most turbulent times (Charles Coates\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Claire admitted the years leading up to her leadership weren\u2019t strong. But in her first four seasons, Williams climbed back toward the front. The team finished third in the standings, outracing Ferrari in 2014 and Red Bull in 2015, and held steady with back-to-back fifth-place finishes in 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was punching above our weight,\u201d Claire said. \u201cThat was the underdog and taking the fight to the bigger teams, and being not even the best of the rest, but being better than some of the top teams of the time. But it did become much harder from that 2017 season onwards, when the differences in spending were quite considerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams began slipping in performance from 2017 on, top 10 finishes becoming an exception rather than the standard. Come 2020, Claire faced the \u201cheartbreaking\u201d decision of selling the family team to Dorilton Capital, but she said it was sold to someone \u201cwho had the resources\u201d and who \u201crespected its legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with a new owner, the Williams name has stayed, something that\u2019s important to team principal James Vowles. \u201cIt\u2019s paramount for me as an individual,\u201d he said to The Athletic. \u201cI want to honor what was created before me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenson Button, who raced for the team in 2000 and returned as an ambassador, described Williams to The Athletic as \u201cthe same as it always has been.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family feel remains with Vowles at the helm. He holds periodic lunches with eight to 10 people from different departments across the company, regardless of hierarchy, and it has been a way not just for Vowles to speak with the team beyond the team-wide chats, but also for the departments to speak more to one another. It creates a communication channel that might not have been there otherwise, he said.<\/p>\n

It may just be one of the ways that he\u2019s managed to revive the team. Williams is working to update the infrastructure and bring Williams back to the front of the midfield fight. Vowles is focused on laying the foundation for a stronger future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Williams in some ways was definitely set in its ways,\u201d Button said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably wrong, but it takes someone like James to come in and say, \u2018Look, we\u2019re going to try and do it like this.\u2019 And people believe in him, and people trust. He\u2019s confident, very eloquent, and he\u2019s also been with the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Button won his world championship with Vowles at Brawn, and said he knows the work ethic he brings to the job. But to turn a team around, \u201cit doesn\u2019t just take one man, obviously, (or) one woman. It\u2019s a group of people,\u201d Button said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of very talented people here. Some of them really needed a bit of help in direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think having Alex Albon as a team leader is key as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Albon joined the team in 2022 and signed a multi-year extension last spring<\/a>, which will run until at least the end of next season. Throughout his tenure with the team, he\u2019s scored a vast majority of its points (42 points out of Williams\u2019 55 so far this year and sitting eighth in the driver standings heading into the British Grand Prix weekend).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know he had a lot of very good offers, but he felt that this is the team that could give him what he wants in the future,\u201d Button said. \u201cIt\u2019s not about tomorrow. It\u2019s about new regulations, 2026, and fighting for the world championship after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Alex Albon is a key part of Williams\u2019 plans (Rudy Carezzevoli\/Getty Images)What\u2019s to come<\/p>\n

Williams made the decision to not update the 2025 car, pulling it from the wind tunnel on January 2, and instead focus on next year\u2019s challenger. The regulations change next year, giving teams like Williams the chance to jump ahead in the pecking order.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext year is basically a clean sheet of paper \u2014 you can redraw everything,\u201d Vowles said. \u201cThere\u2019s no carryover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, Williams leads the midfield battle heading into round 12, with a comfortable 19-point buffer over Racing Bulls. It has faced its fair share of reliability issues. Albon scored points across four consecutive race weekends before suffering three straight DNFs.<\/p>\n

One of the big questions is when the rest of the midfield will catch up to Williams, as other teams haven\u2019t halted their development yet. Vowles told The Athletic last year that \u201cthe development rate in Formula One is so enormous that you can see a team move from as we did, towards the back to the top end of the midfield within the space of four or five months, if you do the right decisions and the right development.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vowles has long put an emphasis on 2026, because it\u2019s a moment when Williams can \u201cre-establish itself.\u201d He views it as a starting point for the medium and long-term goals he has for the team.<\/p>\n

\u201c2028, we\u2019re not winning championships, but we\u2019re definitely pushing ourselves into a state where we\u2019re recognized as being one of the top contenders for the future,\u201d Vowles said. \u201cAnd then beyond there is just how quickly we can make sure we get our process systems, assets in place to be competing at the highest level. There\u2019s still opportunity before then, but it\u2019s not something that you switch on overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a journey that you have to embark on.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Top image of Alex Albon and Frank Williams: Minas Panagiotakis\/Getty Images, Edaordo Fornaciari\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two-tone Williams pops at any Formula One circuit. The nose is covered in a deeper blue, called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,4979,79,25711,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-242217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-motorsports","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-sports-business","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114805321683689292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}