The team that conquered F1 from a carpet warehouse: Williams' 750 grands prix

Williams used uncompetitive Judd engines in 1988, and got lost as it tried to develop an active ride system that Mansell hated: “In the aftermath of losing Honda we tried too hard really, and gave ourselves too many engineering challenges,” says Head. “We had the débâcle of active ride in 1988, when we had to take it off the car for all sorts of reasons.”

Head insists that he never felt frustrated as McLaren scored success after success with Honda: “I was up to my eyeballs in work, and I’ve never been one to look backwards and say something’s not fair. I think if I ever had any of that in me as my character, my father would have kicked it out of me when I was 16 or something, because he was a fairly tough character!

“And so I didn’t sit and look back, it was just get on with the future. And we signed up with Renault, and I think we won a couple of races with Renault in the first year. The belt drive was pretty unreliable. So it wasn’t really a championship potential engine in 1989. It took us ’89 and ’90, and then we started getting serious in ’91.

“And I accept full blame for not winning the championship in 1991. It was our first semi-automatic gearbox, and for the most stupid of reasons it was unreliable. But after three or four races, we considerably outscored McLaren, but we weren’t able to catch up with them.”

“And by that time the active car was beginning to do better lap times than the passive car, and delivering the promise that was always seen theoretically.”

In 1991 Williams had perfected the active suspension system on the FW14, and the FW14B of 1992 was to be dominant, helped by the input of the brilliant Adrian Newey, who became a huge influence on the team.

“In 1991 Nigel and Riccardo Patrese were very close together on performance, but in ’92 Nigel stepped up relative to Riccardo,” says Head. “The main reason was the feeling and feedback from the active system. Nigel worked out that providing you could persuade yourself to trust it, it would be there once you had got into the corner. Nigel adapted to it, but Riccardo always wished it was a standard car.

“The good work was done over the winter, and then it was a question of just running the car. I think by the end of the year McLaren were beginning to make good progress with their active system, and they were getting it to work pretty well.”

Mansell left at the end of the 1992 season, and in 1993 Alain Prost dominated the World Championship in the FW15.

“We started work on the 15 towards the end of ‘91, and it was intended to be the ‘92 car, but we decided to start the season with the 14B. With the 14B it was a relatively straightforward conversion from off to on, whereas the 15 was a committed active car, with no either/or. However, we seemed to be so strong, and thought, ‘Maybe we don’t need to bring the 15 in this year.’

“The FW15 in 1993 wasn’t a bad car, but I don’t think it was a particularly significant step better than the FW14B. There could have been an argument that we might have done better to develop the 14B and run that in ’93, but your tendency is always to do a new car.”

Prost retired at the end of 1993, as his old nemesis Senna joined the team. Then 1994 brought tragedy when the Brazilian was killed at Imola.

“I must say, undoubtedly, Ayrton was a very, very special driver,” says Head. “He left McLaren expecting to climb into a perfect car, and the car wasn’t perfect. The unfortunate thing is, by the time we started the Grand Prix at Imola, the car was a lot better, and he was absolutely convinced that he was going to win the race.”

Damon Hill challenged for the 1994 title, but he lost out to Michael Schumacher at the final race. Hill continued to be a race winner with the FW17 in 1995, but made too many mistakes, and again lost to Schumacher.

“We finished the 1995 season with the general feeling that we should have won the championship. We were probably not very good at driver psychology. I think Damon felt that we felt that he should have won the championship. I have to say I admire how he responded. I think there was a suggestion that Michael was fitter than he was, and Michael could operate like a qualifying lap every lap, more so than Damon had.

“But Damon got himself enormously fit, and he lost the feeling of inferiority to Michael, I think he felt he was just as fit as Michael. So he turned up in 1996 as the same basic personality, but a much more self-confident, focused, ‘let’s do this job’ person than we had finished with in ‘95. The car was good, and apart from one or two little hiccups early in the season we started scoring and looked as if we could take the championship that year.”

Hill duly beat new team-mate Jacques Villeneuve to the 1996 World Championship. At the end of that season Newey left, but Villeneuve went on to win the 1997 title. That was to be the last year with works Renault power: “The ’97 car was mapped out by Adrian, who stood down at the end of ’96. We had people good enough to deal with any problems. I don’t think the development rate was that fast year-to-year at that time.”

A new works deal was agreed with BMW, and meanwhile the team had two difficult years with Mecachrome/Supertec engines. In 2000 Williams gave Jenson Button his debut and raced with BMW power for the first time, and as with the early days with Honda and Renault, there were lots of reliability issues.

“The BMW was a very big, bulky, rather heavy engine. But it was powerful, no doubt about that. I think BMW were up to their eyeballs keeping engines going. We always used to change the engine for the race, but we had engine changes in the middle of practice, we had engine changes on Friday night. We had a lot of engine changes. And for BMW just keeping up with it was a massive effort.”

By 2001 Williams and BMW were winning races, and challenging pacesetters Ferrari and McLaren, and in 2003 Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher were potential title contenders with the FW25, but the crown slipped away.

“We could very easily have won the championship. There was complete and total animosity between Montoya and Ralf. I couldn’t believe how childish the two were in the latter part of that season. But we were definitely the fastest car, aided by a very powerful BMW engine.”

It was around that time that Head reduced his day-to-day technical responsibilities.

“I stepped down from being technical director and handed over to Sam Michael in 2004, after we sort of got ourselves competitive in 2003, but for stupid reasons, blew the last three races. And we started 2004 with that dreadful short nose with two fins on it. I was by that time living in London, and commuting, and I didn’t feel I was keeping enough control over what was going on.”

Meanwhile BMW had ambitions to own an F1 team: “They offered to buy Williams, for a very, very low sum. And we said no, so they then went off and later on they did their deal with Sauber. I think if we’d been cleverer, we could have avoided that split.

“But it would have meant literally having them at Grove telling us what to do. And I don’t think I was prepared for that. I would say that from 2001 to 2005, when we had a decent engine, we won 10 grands prix. From 2006 until they pulled out, four years, they only won one grand prix!”

As the decade progressed Head remained involved with Williams, but with reduced responsibilities. The team gradually slipped from competitiveness as it moved from BMW to Cosworth to Toyota back to Cosworth. In 2011 Head sold the majority of his shares, and reduced his involvement further.

In 2012 there was a reunion with Renault. Pastor Maldonado scored a shock pole and win in Spain that year – it remains the most recent success. There was a return to form with Mercedes power in the early days of the hybrid era, with Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, but then the team went into a slump. By then Head was no longer directly involved, but in 2019 he made a brief return as a consultant.

Head sold the remainder of his shares as part of the recent purchase by Dorilton that saw the Williams family formally leave. With Jost Capito at the helm, the team is making solid progress – and the German has made it clear that the new management has enormous respect for Frank and Patrick.

“Frank and I were a good pair,” says Head. “Would I have started a Grand Prix team? No, I never would have done on my own. Frank had the blind. confidence. He was a person who put his head on the pillow and went to sleep and slept 10 hours every night. And I was a worrier, completely opposite. But we were a pair that worked well together.”