Sir Frank Williams’ death on Sunday was a source of grief for anyone with a motorsport heart.
One of the last F1 garage owners and a man who, together with Patrick Head, has conquered the world in terms of F1, 9 constructors’ championships and seven drivers’s world championships that make the team one of the greats of all time.
It is entirely appropriate to allow those with much deeper memories and personal relationships with Sir Frank, the Williams family, and the Williams Grand Prix team to take the lead to recall his myriad life achievements, but here we take an or two moments to look at some of the other milestones that have shaped his and his place in motorsport history.
Williams was part of success stories in rally, touring and world-class sports cars with seven victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, at least with the involvement of Williams subsidiaries.
During the Group B rally era in 1981, Williams was involved in the design and development of the legendary MG Metro 6R4, although the production vehicles were built on a special line at the Austin Rover plant in Longbridge.
In the late 1990s, Williams joined the then-booming BTCC network for a three-year program with Renault, the initially successful Lagunas, developed in-house at Williams, and the team led by an offshoot of the core team.
While the BTCC program was running, another program was in progress and this time Le Mans was the destination.
BMW was a new partner for Williams and hired the team to develop their new LMP car to take on the Le Mans challenge. When the GT1 formula got out of cost control, BMW opted for the prototype route, the previous works program, which revolved around the (glorious!) BMW V12 engine McLaren F1 GTR, had reached the end of its competitive life.
The result was the BMW V12 LM designed by John Russell, again with the extraordinary 6-liter V12 with a chassis and aero designed by Williams.
The car looked fine, but despite the breakthrough advances in front aero construction and raised toe box design, the car had significant flaws, cooling was compromised by less than ideal environmental conditions, and the cars would not be finished in factory hands at Le Mans , with Schnitzer, in 1998.
The following year, with the privately owned vehicles now ex-factory and some developments, there would be fifth overall for Thomas Bscher’s Price + Bscher car operated by David Price Racing, an excellent result behind the BMW works vehicle (see below ), Toyota and Audi.
Factory efforts had since shifted to a completely new chassis, in turn designed and built by Williams, the new V12 LMR with even more mold braking advances, particularly the single roll hoop cockpit design.
The new car would win on its debut at Sebring and a trio of cars was entered for Le Mans, although the Jenny Holzer ‘Art-Car’ would not drive.
The open-top cars ultimately weren’t as fast as some of the GTP coupes, but since the Mercedes CLR measures suffered a very public disastrous series of airplane failures and the Toyota measures proved to be incidents and accidents as well, the BMWs were stepped in in the foreground, the car with starting number 17 dominated until JJ Lehto rammed into the awl in the Porsche bends with a stuck throttle with a lead of around four laps!
However, the sister car would take the win!
The V12 LMR would also be victorious in the American Le Mans Series, taking six ALMS wins (including at Silverstone in 2000) in two seasons, plus another 13 podiums, with the team finishing second in both (after Audi) in 1999 and 2000 before the cars were retired.
Williams’ influence on sports cars was far from complete, however, nowhere near.
Due to the increasing interest in hybrid technology, several projects were launched:
The 2010 Porsche 997 GT3 R Hybrid featured hybrid technology developed by Williams, which is based on the use of kinetic energy stored in a flywheel instead of batteries.
The car led the Nürburgring 24 Hours 2010 convincingly until an engine failure spoiled the race in the 23rd hour!
The car won the VLN in 2011 and completed other races at the ALMS and the Intercontinental Le Mans Challenge (forerunner of the FIA WEC), including a notable run in Zhuhai in 2010 where the car finished 6th overall ahead of all the other GT1 and GT1 GT2 runner.
That came when the hybrid era was dated in the FIA WEC and the flywheel developed by Williams was in the foreground again, the technology that was built into the original factory Audi R18 e-tron quattro and in a heavily revised form between 2012 and In 2015, before 2016, the car was converted to a battery-based energy storage system.
This period earned Audi Team Joest a hat-trick of Le Mans victories, a further 8 WEC race victories and successive manufacturers ‘and drivers’ championships in the FIA WEC in 2012 and 2013.
Another part of the Williams technology family then took over the Le Mans rudder with an advisory role on the aero package for the all-conquering Porsche 919 Hybrid – another trio of Le Mans 24-hour victories – and three other manufacturers’ world championships – came with a little help from Williams Advanced Engineering!
And beyond that, there were significant contributions – Williams Advanced Engineering was also the wind tunnel partner for the Ginetta LMP1 program and the Williams name will live on with Williams Advanced Engineering as the specification supplier into the next golden age of sports cars. Battery as the heart of the hybrid system that will power the LMDH prototypes from 2023 and beyond.
Sir Frank and the Williams family are no longer directly involved in the company that bears their name – but without Sir Frank’s drive and vision, there would have been no company that could be resold.
We can long remember one of the bravest men in motorsport!
Above image copyright and courtesy of Formula1.com
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