Frank Williams (Formula One)

Early life

Born in South Shields, County Durham, England, son of a serving RAF officer and a special education teacher (and later headmistress), Williams was in part brought up by his maternal aunt and uncle in Jarrow when his parents' marriage broke down. He subsequently spent much of his later childhood at a private, fee-paying boarding school, St Joseph's College, Dumfries, in Scotland. In the late 1950s a friend gave Williams a ride in his Jaguar XK150 and young Frank was immediately hooked on fast cars.

Professional career

After a brief career as a driver and mechanic, funded by his work as a travelling grocery salesman, Williams founded Frank Williams Racing Cars in 1966. He ran drivers including Piers Courage and Tony Trimmer for several years in Formula Two and Formula Three. Williams purchased a Brabham Formula One chassis, which Courage drove throughout the 1969 Formula One season, twice finishing in second place.

In 1970 Williams undertook a brief partnership with Alejandro de Tomaso. After the death of Courage at the Dutch Grand Prix that year, Williams's relationship with de Tomaso ended. In 1971 he raced Henri Pescarolo with a chassis he had purchased from March Engineering. 1972 saw the first F1 car built by the Williams works, the Politoys FX3 designed by Len Bailey, but Pescarolo crashed and destroyed it at its first race.

Williams, short on cash (he conducted team business from a telephone box at one point after being disconnected for unpaid bills), looked to Marlboro and Iso Rivolta, an Italian car company, for sponsorship. Though they pledged their support, they did not come through in time and in 1976 Williams took on a partner in oil magnate Walter Wolf. Though the team continued functioning, it no longer belonged to Frank Williams and he left in 1977 along with one of his old employees, engineer Patrick Head. The two acquired an empty carpet warehouse in Didcot, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom and announced the formation of Williams Grand Prix Engineering. This same team and partnership still competes in Formula One and is known as WilliamsF1. They are currently based just outside the South Oxfordshire village of Grove, near Wantage.

The team's first win came in 1979 when Clay Regazzoni drove the Cosworth powered Williams FW07 to victory at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Their first Drivers' and Constructors' championships both came in 1980 with Australian Alan Jones winning the drivers' championship and the team winning the constructors title by 54 points. Between 1981 and 1997, the team won six more drivers' championships and eight more constructors' championships. On 2 March 2012, Williams announced he will be stepping down from the board of Williams F1 and would be replaced by his daughter Claire, although he would still remain with the team in the role of Team Principal.

Spinal injury

Williams has used a wheelchair since becoming tetraplegic after a car accident in France on 6 March 1986. He was driving with team sponsorship manager Peter Windsor in a rented Ford Sierra from the Paul Ricard Circuit to Nice airport when the incident happened. Williams had been at the circuit to watch the testing of the team's new F1 car. But as a keen long distance runner, he was returning to the airport following the trials because he wished to compete in a fun run in London the next day.

During the drive to the airport, Williams lost control of the rental car on a slight left hand kink in the road causing it to leave the highway. An 8 ft (2.4 m) drop between the road and a field caused the car to roll onto the driver's side (left hand drive). Williams suffered a spinal fracture between the 4th and 5th vertebra after being pressed between his seat and the crushed roof. Windsor sustained only minor injuries.

Personal life

Frank Williams met Virginia Berry in 1967 and they married in 1974. They had two sons, Jonathan and Jaime and a daughter, Claire. Virginia Williams (later Lady Williams and known by many as Ginny) wrote an autobigraphical book A Different Kind of Life (published 1991) that describes her experiences in the formula one team's formative years as well as her husband's near-fatal accident in 1986. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 and died on 7 March 2013 at the age of 66.

Honours

In 1987, the Queen awarded Williams the title of CBE. He was knighted in 1999. He has been made a Chevalier of France's Legion d'honneur, this honour accorded for his work with Renault engines. In 2008, Williams was awarded the Wheatcroft trophy.

On 19 December 2010, he was awarded the Helen Rollason Award for "outstanding achievement in the face of adversity" at the BBC Sports Personality of The Year Awards.

On 15 October 2012, the main road through the new Great Western Park development in Didcot was named "Sir Frank Williams Avenue" with Williams unveiling its name plate.

Death of Ayrton Senna

In May 1994, following the death of Ayrton Senna in the FW16 at Imola, Williams was charged with manslaughter in accordance with Italian law, but he was acquitted after several years. Since Senna's death, all his F1 cars have carried a tribute to Senna featuring a small Senna "S" logo. Every chassis since the FW17 had the logo on the front wing supports or nearby. Rumor surfaced that it would be dropped for 2012 but was quickly denied by Williams.