New Motorsport Week article: Forty years on - how Williams rose to the top

Suyk, Koen / Anefo / neg. stroken, 1945-1989, 2.24.01.05,
item number 930-4115 [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl (https://
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This is a very a special British Grand Prix weekend for Williams. Sir Frank Williams' half-decade as a team boss is being marked, while the race takes place 40 years to the day since Williams took its first ever F1 win, which also was at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix.

For Motorsport Week I look back four decades to how the team first rose to the top, which - strange as it may seem several championships later - was rather an unlikely rise at the time.

You can check the tale out here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/23644

The Arrows A2, and why it's in my F1 Dream Team

For how long did we all bemoan that F1 - as in the sport centrally - simply didn't get the new media? Or 'didn't get' it as in it almost totally ignored it? But in recent months it seems that F1, even F1, has learned, with it partaking in much greater activity on Twitter and the like.

And that isn't a dream. Although, in a certain particular recent sense, it is. With considerable novelty the F1 official Twitter account asked a few of the sport's luminaries, along with the rest of us, to name their own 'F1 Dream Team'. That is their dream car, team principal and driver pairing combination from the sport's history. And no, I couldn't resist it either. Dutifully I rattled the team of my dreams off. And whatever else you might think of it surely it gets something for originality.

The striking Arrows A2
"Arrows A2 1" by MPW57 - Own work. Licensed under CC
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For me the starting point, the car for my dream team, was the Arrows A2. Now if you have a blank expression at this I can offer you the reassurance that you probably wouldn't be the only one. It's not a car that can be described as a classic by any of the standard measures. Not on the grounds of results - it only scored two points ever from two rather distant sixth place finishes. Nor on the grounds of longevity - it only was around for half a season, and in almost all of that period was merely serving time in a sort of F1 purgatory as the team, who'd long since lost faith, worked on its replacement. But is a car that has always fascinated me.

Mainly on the grounds of its striking looks. I think it first got my attention when watching the footage of that famous last-race scrap between Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux in the 1979 French GP at Dijon. Of course it takes rather a lot to crowbar your attention away from that frenzied battle but on the final lap two cars can be seen up the track from them. As all head downhill to Dijon's first turn our viewpoint is of them at their full width, looking scarcely like any F1 machine as we know it. Indeed they may bring to mind instead some kind of unknown sea creature descending upon us. Really, even in an era known for its distinctive designs the Arrows A2 cannot be mistaken for anything else seen at the time, prior or since.