ABOVE : Clay Regazzoni © The Silverstone Interactive Museum / Archive
SUCCEEDING AGAINST THE ODDS
On their own , his team ’ s numbers are remarkable : 114 grand prix victories ( a tally beaten only by Ferrari , McLaren and Mercedes ) and 16 world championship titles , nine for constructors and seven for drivers . But such bald statistics tell only a fraction of the story about Sir Frank Williams ’ s life in Formula 1 .
They don ’ t reflect the struggles of his early years as a grand prix entrant , or the fact he briefly had to run his business from a telephone box because a failure to pay bills had led to the office lines being cut . There is no indication that , having sold the team he ’ d founded to secure its future , he didn ’ t enjoy life as an employee and left to set up again on his own . And much of his team ’ s proud record was achieved after a road accident that left him paralysed . So severe were his injuries that doctors at the receiving hospital asked his wife Ginny for permission to switch off his life support . She declined .
That was March 1986 . By July he was back in the pit lane for the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch – a fleeting appearance , in that instance , but a foretaste of his eventual return to lead and inspire the team bearing his name .
Williams was once a racer himself , initially contesting UK club events in saloon cars . In 1963 he quit his job as a soup salesman to travel Europe , working without pay as a mechanic for his friend Jonathan Williams ( no relation ) in Formula Junior . The pair originally met after having separate accidents at the same corner during an event at Mallory Park …
By the following year Williams had done sufficient wheeling and dealing to fund some F3 races in a loaned Brabham BT9 , but eventually he scaled back his driving activities to focus on building his business , Frank Williams Racing Cars , which traded in motor racing spares and later became a team .
In 1968 , after running his friend Piers Courage in a promising European F2 Championship campaign , Williams decided the time had come to tackle grand prix racing . He wanted to buy the latest-spec BT26 chassis from the Brabham factory , which predictably – not wanting extra competition – declined to sell him one . Unfazed , Williams contacted UK racer David Bridges , who had bought a BT26 on condition that he fit it with a Chevrolet V8 engine for the new-to-Europe Formula 5000 category . Williams persuaded him to part with the car , much to the Brabham team ’ s annoyance , and ran it for Courage in the 1969 world championship . Despite limited resources , Courage finished second at both Monaco and Watkins Glen and fifth at Silverstone and Monza to take eighth place in the final standings .
Courage was offered a Ferrari seat for 1970 but opted to remain loyal to Williams as he entered
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