Williams: the team we love to love

There’s are a certain symmetry to the fact that this issue contains both a celebration of Renault’s pioneering turbo era and also of the sleeping Formula 1 giant that is Williams Racing. Throughout the 1990s the team that Frank built and the state-owned French F1 engine manufacturer dominated the sport beating pretty much all comers. Only Benetton managed to break the hegemony by taking the constructors’ title in 1995 (using Renault power of course) and preventing Williams claiming six successive victories between 1992-97. Who then would have thought that the bitter title victory in Jerez for Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 would secure the last world title for Williams for 28 years and counting.

Then again as Mark Hughes explains in his forensic style on page 50, Williams has never been an easy team to predict. It has always operated on the fringes of the F1 establishment. While its rival McLaren under Ron Dennis fastidiously and methodically planned its assault on world titles, Williams relied on strokes of genius. It operated in a less-structured world and to many was all the more attractive because of it. “It swashed and occasionally buckled,” writes Mark, “but was incredibly charismatic out there on the ledge redefining F1’s performance parameters through sheer audacity.”

“James Vowles has diagnosed Williams’ problem and knows how to fix it”

Those days are long gone and in today’s world there is no room for artisan players, while shareholders are unlikely to indulge the whims of swashbucklers like Frank. But there are signs that under the ownership of Dorilton, Williams may finally be getting its act together. At the halfway point of the season the team sits squarely mid-table; in Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz it has a young and talented driver line-up and in James Vowles a thoughtful team principal who has not only diagnosed the problem but also appears to know how to fix it. As the team looks forward to 2026 and new regulations, it is not too fanciful to wonder if we might be in for a true British 1990s revival with both McLaren and Williams battling it out at the front of the grid.

No such optimism for Renault, alas. While Karl Ludvigsen conjures the company’s heyday brilliantly on page 84 there is no avoiding the painful backdrop to the story: the Viry-Châtillon factory which has been responsible not just for some of the all-time great F1 engines but became a byword for French racing excellence is slipping into the history books. It is to be mothballed and the Renault Group-owned Alpine F1 team will instead be racing with Mercedes engines from 2026. Sacre bleu, indeed.

Joe Dunn, editor
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