Lunch with… Sir Frank Williams

Taken from Motor Sport, May 2015, Lunch with… Sir Frank Williams

Almost unbelievably, this year marks the 47th consecutive season that Frank Williams has fielded a Formula 1 team. The first Grand Prix with a Williams entry on the grid was in Barcelona on May 4 1969. Ferrari and McLaren, as marques, can claim a longer history: but no single man has run his own F1 outfit for so long. Along the way his cars have racked up seven world championships for drivers and nine for constructors. Having received the CBE in 1987, Frank was knighted in 1999, made a member of the Motor Sport Hall of Fame in 2011 and is also a member of the French Légion d’Honneur.

For any man, this would add up to an extraordinarily full and successful life. But in Frank’s case it is something far greater. It has been achieved despite a cataclysmic road accident in 1986 that left him almost totally paralysed, and confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In the ensuing 29 years he has continued to run his team, continued to win Grands Prix, continued to earn world championships. He will say this is because he has been fortunate to have around him a superbly talented and highly motivated team: but none of it could have happened without his inspiring leadership. In fact, if you spend any time with Frank Williams, inspiring is the word that leaps to mind. He is an inspiration, not just within the self-obsessed, inward-looking world of F1, but to all of us in a wider world.