Frank Williams, the iron general (obituary)
11/30/2021
Sir Frank Williams, also known as "the Iron General", passed away last Sunday, November 28, 2021, at the age of 79. His F1 team was one of the most successful in the history of Grand Prix racing. To date, Williams has achieved 114 GP victories, 128 pole positions, seven drivers' titles and nine constructors' titles.
F1 boss Stefano Domenicali paid tribute to Frank Williams: "He was a true giant of our sport, who took on the biggest possible challenges in life and overcame them. He fought every day to win on and off the track."
Frank was born on April 16, 1942 in South Shields, England. He grew up as the son of an air force officer and became passionate about motorsport at an early age. He began selling and trading racing car accessories, founded his own racing team in the mid-sixties and entered Formula 3 and then Formula 2.
His life was marked by serious setbacks. It began with the death of Piers Courage at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix, when Frank lost not only a racing driver but also a friend.
Williams founded his first F1 team with the Austro-Canadian Walter Wolf, after having raced his cars in the lower classes in previous years. Money worries led him to team up with Wolf, but this did not work out in his favor. He would sometimes run naked around a church for a bit of money. He founded a new team together with his friend and later long-time technical director Patrick Head and returned to F1 in 1978.
As early as 1979, Swiss driver Clay Regazzoni took the first victory for the fledgling team at Silverstone. In 1980, the Williams F1 team became world champions for the first time with Alain Jones. The Williams team went on to win six more titles with Keke Rosberg, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve. Outsider Pastor Maldonado took his last victory in Spain in 2012 and the team's last podium finish came this year at Spa-Francorchamps, when George Russell finished second on the podium, which Frank was able to witness on TV.
In 1986, Frank suffered a second major setback when he and Peter Windsor were on their way to the airport from testing at Le Castellet and suffered a serious car accident that confined him to a wheelchair as a quadriplegic. His love of racing was so great that he continued to run his team successfully despite his severe disability.
The third tragedy followed in 1994, when Ayrton Senna was killed in a Williams accident in Imola on May 1st. Since that sad accident, every Williams car has had a Senna logo on the nose.
In 1999, he was made a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth ll for his services to British motorsport and, to mark his 50th anniversary as team boss, he was chauffeured around the Silverstone circuit in an AMG Mercedes S63 by Sir Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton told him that he had been instructed to drive him carefully around the track, to which Frank replied: "Are you joking?" Afterwards he said to Lewis: "That was great, great fun. Quite unforgettable, I have to say, quite unforgettable. That memory will live on in my brain for a very long time, Lewis."
After a debilitating bout of pneumonia, he handed over the reins to his daughter Claire in 2012. Financial problems led to the sale to Dorilton Capital in 2020.
The team's statement on Sunday read: "Sir Frank was a true legend and icon of our sport. His passing marks the end of an era for our team and for the sport of F1. His values of integrity, teamwork, independence and determination remain at the core of our team and are his legacy, as is the Williams family name under which we race with pride."
From a Swiss perspective, there were two Swiss drivers in one of his cockpits. Not everyone knows that Jo Vonlanthen also drove for Frank Williams in 1975. Unfortunately, he started the Austrian GP with severely inferior equipment and the wrong age. Jo was afraid of losing his cockpit if he revealed his true age. Vonlanthen traveled to the race in a Subaru and was promptly ridiculed by his employer. "What you're driving a 'Jap', for heaven's sake, I would never do that."
Years later, Williams famously won the world championship with Honda engines and was chauffeured privately in a Honda. Clay Regazzoni won the first victory for him, but the joy was limited, as people would have preferred to see Alan Jones as the winner at the time.
Incidentally, that race in England in 1979 was my first Grand Prix outing without the support of my father. 552 more were to follow. I was able to work closely with the Williams team in the years with BMW (2000-2005), but that's another story for another time ...
