Current Williams

Williams Grand Prix Engineering

FIA Entry: AT&T Williams
Car 11: Rubens Barrichello
Car 12: Pastor Maldonado
Engine: Cosworth V8
Team Principal: Frank Williams
Director of Engineering: Patrick Head
Technical Director: Sam Michael
Race Engineer Car 11: Tony Ross
Race Engineer Car 12: Tom McCullough

Stats as of end 2010

First Entered 1977
Races Entered 539
Race Wins 113
Pole Positions 126
Fastest Laps 130
Driver World Championships 7
Constructor World Championships 9

Team History

The Early Years

Like many team owners and principals Frank Williams started life as a driver and mechanic. Realising his ability as a driver wouldn't allow him to reach the levels he hoped Williams set up Frank Williams Racing Cars and in 1969 entered a Brabham chassis for Piers Courage. Through to 1976 Williams entered customer cars from other manufacturers before settings up Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1977 with Patrick Head.

Williams Grand Prix Engineering

In 1977 Williams GPE entered a March 761 for Patrick Neve. In 1978 Patrick Head designed his first Williams car, the FW06, driven by Australian Alan Jones The car scored it's first points at the South African Grand Prix and Jones took Williams first podium at Long Beach, finishing 2nd behind Carlos Reutemann in a Ferrari.

In 1979 the FW07 chassis debuted and Williams had grown into a 2 car team with Clay Regazzoni joining Alan Jones. Regazzoni scored Williams first Grand Prix victory at Silverstone and Jones took another 4 victories that season. Continuing with the FW07(in A and B spec) in 1980 Jones, now partnered by Carlos Reutemann, won 6 races (5 for Jones and 1 for Reutemann) with Jones winning the drivers title and Williams the Constructors Championship.

With the FW07 in C & D spec Williams won 4 more races and again took the Constructors Championship in 1981 but missed out on the Drivers Title. Continuing with Cosworth power in 1982 Williams moved onto the FW08, a car originally designed as 6 wheeler, and Keke Rosberg joined Carlos Reutemann. Reutemann retired 2 races into the season and Mario Andretti stood in for a single race before Derek Daly permanently replaced Reutemann. Rosberg only managed a single win at the Swiss Grand Prix 1982 but it was enough for him to win the Drivers Championship.

Having driven for Frank Williams back in 1974 and 1975 Jacques Laffite partnered Keke Rosberg in 1983. Rosberg won the Monaco Grand Prix with Cosworth power and by the end of the season Williams had moved to Honda turbo power and the FW09 chassis. 1984 continued the pattern of 1 win per season for Rosberg and the Williams team with Keke taking first place in Dallas.

The Honda Era

Nigel Mansell joined Williams in 1985 and the team, still with Honda turbo engines, won 4 Grand Prix. Piquet replaced Rosberg for 1986 and between them Mansell and Piquet won 9 of the 16 races and Williams the Constructors Championship. 1987 saw another 9 victories for the team and another victory in the Constructors Championship as well as Piquet winning the Drivers Title

The departure of Honda as engine supplier and Piquet as a driver in 1989 saw Williams move temporarily to Judd engines and Mansell, now partnered by Riccardo Patrese, had a very lean season with their highest finish only 4th.

Renault Power

Williams secured Renault V10 power for 1989 and the next 9 season proved to be Williams most successful. They won 63 Grands Prix, 5 Constructors Championship (1992, 93, 94, 96 & 97) and 4 Drivers Titles (Mansell 92, Prost 93, Hill 96 and Villeneuve 97). Other winners for Williams in this period of dominance included Riccardo Patrese, Thierry Boutsen, Heinz Harald Frentzen and David Coulthard. This period was also touched by tragedy when Ayrton Senna lost his life in a Williams car at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola in 1994

The withdrawal of Renault from F1 in 1998 moved Williams into another barren spell as the cars were powered by ageing Renault engines produced by Mecachrome (98) and Supetec (99).

BMW Williams

Williams changed to BMW V10 engines in 2000 and returned to the winners circle in 2001 with Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya at the wheel. The partnership with BMW continued until 2006 with Williams winning 10 Grands Prix and were runners up in the Constructors Championship in 2002 and 2003. Ralph Schumacher drove for Williams for 6 season and was partnered by Alex Zanardi, Jenson Button (debuting in F1 in 2000) and Montoya with Mark Gene and Antonio Pizzonia making occasional appearances as stand in drivers. BMW's final season with Williams saw Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld taking podiums but able to not challenge for wins.

Toyota Customer

A season of Cosworth power in 2006, with Mark Webber joined by F1 new boy Nico Rosberg, proved very unsuccessful and in 2007 Williams became customers of Toyota. As one of the few truly independent teams still competing in F1 Williams struggled to compete with the factory supported teams and were probably best categorised as "the best of the rest". Webber left at the end of 2007 and Rosberg, initially partnered by Alex Wurz and then by Toyota "works" driver Kazuki Nakajima, managed a highest finish of 2nd in Singapore 2008 with Williams finishing 4th, 8th and 7th in the Constructors Championship whilst using Toyota power.

In 2009 Williams sold a minority share in the company to an Austrian investment company led by Toto Wolff.

Williams Cosworth

In 2010 Williams returned to Cosworth engines and signed up Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg to drive for them. Hulkenberg took a surprising pole in changeable weather conditions in Brazil to give Williams their first such grid position since Nick Heidfeld in 2005. Although regular points finishers Williams weren't challenging for wins and finished the season 6th in Constructors Championship.

2011 sees Rubens Barrichello retain his seat at Williams with GP2 Champion Pastor Maldonado alongside him. They will continue with Cosworth engine power.

 

[Titch]

Bottas is confirmed at Williams along with an 18 year old Canadian called Lance Stroll. I for one have never heard of him.

 

[RasputinLives]

We were just discussing him over in the silly season thread. Is this years F3 champion.

 

[vintly]

And he can do somersaults

 

[Titch]

Oh my. Ouch. That does not look good.

 

[Il_leone]

Well I wonder how much accusation of nepotism will there be on him if he fails to deliver?

 

[RasputinLives]

You already started accusing him of it before he was announced so I assume lots.

 

[Il_leone]

whoops then again I could apply the same to Jordan King if he does make it to F1 next season

 

[RasputinLives]

King has had a good year in GP2 and Manor could be driverless so I suspect he might get a go. Go look at King's results in F3 and then look at Strolls. Theb Maybe lay off Lance until at least 4 races in.

 

[Il_leone]

the old saying just because you look good in junior formula does not mean you will be good in F1!

I am not Flavio Briatore who is happy to rubbish drivers even on their debut

For Williams it is actually an interesting pairing of Bottas and Stroll because the former needs to re-establish as a top driver to attract the big teams whilst Stroll could seriously benefit from all those hours in the simulator and surprise a few people and that could seriously hurt Bottas' career and reputation

I am glad that Williams did not go with either Nasr or Ericsson just to appease the sponsors

 

[marksawatsky]

I am happy to see a Canadian in Formula 1. Around here, his reputation is for being a talented driver, not a kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth. We do have some drivers who are said to possess little talent but bag loads of daddy's money, Lance is not one of them. I will quietly cheer for him until he beats Lewis, but maybe by then I'll be tired of Lewis's tattoos and will loudly cheer for Lance

 

[Incubus]

Why is everyone banging onabout his family' s wealth anyway? The great majority of drivers in the history of F1 have, unsurprisingly enough come from moneyed background. why suddenly single him out for that when moneyed young men have always been the norm in motor racing?

 

[RasputinLives]

Around here, his reputation is for being a talented driver, not a kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

I think it is internationally really. Il_leone wanted Alex Lynn to get the drive (he did not do enough this year) so has decided to hold it against young master Stroll.

 

[vintly]

Totally agree Incubus, and I wonder if we'll ever see another Hamilton story? Aside from Lewis' skill (without which none of it would have happened of course), the dedication and perseverance required for Anthony Hamilton to get his boy noticed by McLaren must have been immense. What often happens with talented kids – in any sport – is that they go off the boil in their adolescence, when they become more independent and discover girls / boys / drink etc.

I guess it's inevitable to comment on the wealth when it fills the headlines. He's not just rich, he's super-rich, and 'super-rich' is a dirty word nowadays so attracts negative criticism. So his dad's made billions from being clever at exploiting the rules that bankers have bribed their respective governments to allow to exist in the first place. If he choses to spend some of that on Lance's F1 career then I'm all for it. Hopefully of course he donates billions to sensible causes too, although I can't find any records of that, having looked for all of 15 minutes. He does own more than 20 Ferraris though, and a race-track, and a yacht or two. How the other half live (or should I say 0.01%)

Kudos to Williams for snaffling up the latest best talent and loads of money from someone who's not gonna run out of it any time soon.

 

[F1Brits_90]

Lance Stroll is their on talent without a doubt from what ive read ok 30m helps but i put on silly season thread he's closer to sergio perez than Pastor Maldonado. Alot of cash but alot of talent. You go on Wikipedia & shows he won euro F3 comfortably by nearly 200 pts & 7 wins from last 9, 21 out of last 22 podiums it may not have quality of gp3 but it was utter domination

 

[teabagyokel]

There is inequality and extreme wealth in the world. To paraphrase Péle; if he's good enough, he's poor enough.

 

[Il_leone]

RasputinLives It would be nice to see another Brit on the grid so after a solid season that Lynn had last year and beating Gasly I thought he was the best of the Brits to graduate from GP2 into F1 but his season has been very disappointing and his career progression has lost momentum. He made the right call for himself to leave Red Bull's junior programme but has not made most of his opportunities

I always hoped that Button as part of bringing down the curtain on his career should drive for Williams one more time and give him a win as a nice send off

That could have happened but Jenson thought his former team have regressed since 2014 and was not convince they could be a dominant force and rejected them

At least Williams did not do a typical Williams decision to hire a journeyman or a safe pair of hands

Teenager Lance Stroll to make Formula 1 debut next season

The issue for Stroll would be if he starts performing badly it would always be he is in F1 because of his Dad but if he is quick then those issue would go away

Incubus when its your Dad is one of the team investors in the team and seriously rich then nepotism becomes a focus so there is extra pressure on him to perform

Plus his jump from Euro F3 bypassing Gp3 and Gp2 ...only Max Verstappen has done that which created a wave of PR first was met with criticism about his age and Max has so far managed to prove them wrong

So just wondering if Williams thought if Max Verstappen can do it then there must be another talent outside GP2 and GP3 that needs to be snapped up

Red Bull have set a trend in having the youngest drivers available and it appears Williams have taken a punt


It looks like there will no one graduating from GP2 into F1 next season

 

[Titch]

My only question about him is his age. We have all seen how the other teenager behaves, are we in for more of that ?

 

[Il_leone]

From his initial response to the press about getting the seat at Williams he sounds a lot more mature than Max because he has had to deal with the accusation it was his Dad's money that got him into F1 so he would be keen to prove that he is not a spoilt rich kid

 

[vintly]

Teenagers behaving like teenagers - how very dare they!

I think some occasionally sideways behaviour that we might disagree with but provides entertainment, is exactly what we want. As long as in the main, these young men with the world at their feet and money to burn are generally behaving, then I see it as a plus that the old guard get shaken up by young upstarts.

 

[Il_leone]

I think we are seeing the next generation shaping next season and its the drivers who came from after Hamilton, Rosberg and Vettel who may appear to be the losers and that includes one of those might be Nico Hulkenberg ( and lets hope not) who was dubbed the "the Next Big thing" and got wrongly dropped by Williams because someone was named Maldonado was able to bring in $35million of sponsors ...BUT also managed to damage a lot of cars in the same process

I wonder where Williams would be if they had kept Hulkbenberg for a few more seasons..

Going back to Stroll before Red Bull came along and started throwing in teenagers at the deep end , Williams do have a tradition of fielding young drivers incidentally

Button was 20 years old when he made his debut in 2000 and was world champion by 2009
Rosberg was 20 years old when he made his debut in 2006 and possibly world champion 2016??

Stroll 18 years old could be world champion by 2026??


Bottas already looks like a veteran of F1 but he is only 27 years old which could be a make or break season for him next season