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

Suyk, Koen / Anefo / neg. stroken, 1945-1989, 2.24.01.05,
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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

Tyre wars - such a good idea?

"Did tyres play an important part today?" asked a typically self-important Mark Thatcher - working for American television for some reason - of the victor of the 1981 Las Vegas Grand Prix just finished. That victor was Alan Jones, who couldn't believe his luck that Thatcher seemingly was unaware of the trap he had just laid before himself. "Oh, absolutely" replied Jones. "You see, they keep the wheels from touching the ground".

Alan Jones - knew the value of tyres
"Alan Jones 1980" by NL-HaNA, ANEFO
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Yet even Jones when not being facetious appreciated the real importance of tyres in F1. "Goodyear are letting us down" he said of his rubber to journalist Nigel Roebuck at the Austrian Grand Prix earlier that same season, "we need some proper qualifiers. If it was up to me, I'd go back to Michelin tomorrow". And when it was pointed out that such things often are preceded with 'don't quote me' or similar, Jones was resolute. "Write it" he said. "It might get someone angry - and then something might get done about it".

Yet for all that we scarcely seem to stop talking tyres in modern F1, specific talk as Jones' is now a relic of the past. Now we are in the age of the single tyre supplier supplying its product to any and all competitors. Many ages of F1 past have had but a sole supplier too but nowadays is different, as only one is allowed. Brought in as a cost control device from 2007 onwards tyre suppliers periodically tender to be the sport's solitary chosen one. While you or I might go to visit National Tyres and Autocare or Tyre Shopper to chose their road tyres, F1 teams do not have a say on their rubber.

A decision on the latest contract, for 2017-2019, is expected soon with the incumbent Pirelli and Michelin the two companies that have pitched. It's now in effect an arbitrary Bernie Ecclestone decision as the FIA has approved both tenderers and simply he now does the deal that he chooses. And even though reportedly teams have been putting pressure on to ditch the controversial Italian supplier, as well as that no one's got rich by second guessing BCE, the smart money remains on Pirelli hanging around. Bernie wants to continue to use the rubber as a means of spicing up the show via deliberate degradation it is thought; Michelin is more cool on the idea. So that presumably is that. His rather earnest defence of Pirelli in Monza seemed to rather cement the idea.

New Order

'All I care about is the team, and the points we earn. I don't care who scores them - why should I? Drivers are only employees, after all.'

Whose words are these? They belong to Frank Williams, said some years ago. And partly due to this Felipe Massa wasn't the only one surprised that he received a team order from the Williams pit wall asking him to cede position to his stable mate Valtteri Bottas during Malaysia's race last Sunday.

Discussing team orders? Carlos Reutemann (centre)
in conference with Frank Williams (right, back to camera)
 in 1981
Credit: Dijk, Hans van / Anefo / CC

Sir Frank (or Frank as he was known then) uttered this a few months after the Brazilian Grand Prix of 1981. In the Williams Grand Prix Engineering early days its driver Alan Jones was very much the man. He rose with the team, was a crucial part of it, and therefore the contracts were set very much in his favour. If in a race the two Williams cars were placed one and two and close enough together then Jones was to win, and positions would be swapped to achieve this end if required. As it was, it was hardly enforced as Jones won his and the team's first championship in 1980 as his team mate Carlos Reutemann rarely was quicker, but for 1981 the agreement remained in place. And come round two a freshly on-form Reutemann led from Jones in the Rio rain. Out went the pit board: 'JONES-REUT'. Reutemann disregarded it, and won. The fallout was considerable, especially from the abrasive Jones, but later - and perhaps riled by Jones leaving Frank seriously in the lurch by announcing his retirement late in the 1981 season, long after most drivers to have were signed up elsewhere - Frank mollified his view somewhat and resolved that never again would he place a single driver on a pedestal. It also was around then that he said the words replicated in the opening paragraph.

Looking back: Haas Lola - a study in what might have been

If, if, if. Life is full of them. Counterfactuals. What might have been. How things just might have turned out differently had x, y or z not, or had, happened. And F1 is especially laden with this sort of thing, as is befitting a sport where the distinction between success and failure has a particularly knife-edge quality. To coin the saying, 'F1' is 'if' spelled backwards.

And while we're on the subject of the things that lay alongside actuality, imagine that you could select any two technical brains for your very own F1 'dream team'. Ross Brawn and Adrian Newey are the two that many of us would pick. And why not? They've been (with Rory Byrne) F1's technical stars on the modern age, with only four on the last 21 constructors' champions' cars not having involvement from one or other of them. But while their being brought together to produce a car sounds strictly like it is from the realms of fantasy, it actually very nearly happened, before the plug was unceremoniously pulled on the squad they were part of. The team in question is Haas Lola, the team that ever so fleetingly was F1's next big thing.

'Who?' you might be forgiven was asking, as while both the Haas and Lola names are famous in motorsport more widely neither is central in F1 folklore. But in 1985 it was a team apparently poised to have the same impact on F1 as a bowling ball has on a set of pins. In the event however the team lasted but a single full season, 1986, and in that its cars were usually nowhere near the front. Six points were won via attrition, but that was its lot.

The Haas Lola THL1
Credit: Falcadore / CC

Of course, F1's not exactly short of teams arriving amid much fanfare only for it all to fizzle out when it meets the cold wind of bracing on-track reality. One can think of March, BAR, Caterham/Lotus and others, and thus Haas Lola seems just one example on a rather lengthy and inauspicious list (indeed, some wags later quipped that BAR stood for 'Beatrice Again Racing', in homage to the Haas Lola's chief sponsor). Yet such apparent potential at Team Haas, as the team was otherwise known, being squandered is worthy of its own investigation of what exactly went wrong.

Nelson Piquet: The deepest valley and the highest mountain

The F1 follower is an odd breed. In most activities, participants are judged by their peaks. A writer will be defined by their finest works, not by the contents of their waste paper basket. Orson Welles is remembered for Citizen Kane and not for what he produced during his long decline. Bob Dylan is considered great because of Highway 61 Revisited and Blood on the Tracks, and almost no one considers that his later producing of Slow Train Coming diminishes that.

Same goes for sport too. Name any great sportsperson, Ali, Nicklaus, Maradona, Borg, and it's their crowning achievements that people most associate with them, not what they did (or rather, didn't) when not at their best.

Nelson Piquet - in his Brabham glory days
Credit: Zocchi Massimiliano / CC

But in F1 things are different. We seem to insist on viewing an F1 career holistically; everything - good and bad - is thrown in for scrutiny. And no matter what the achievements subsequent (or previous) struggle is factored in, weighted against the glory. With the struggle we seem to rarely miss an opportunity to ask 'was he that good after all?'. Perhaps it reflects that F1, unlike most activities, is a measure of a combination of man and machine; definitive evidence of the driver's contribution, over and above the supremacy of their equipment, is next to impossible to come by. Therefore, possibly we view it as necessary to not discount any available evidence to form our judgments. But whatever the case, Nelson Piquet has more cause than most to regret this state of affairs.

Piquet won three world titles in his F1 career, along with 23 Grands Prix. Yet you'd hardly know it (not in the English-speaking world anyway). His name rarely features in debates about great F1 drivers, nor even in debates about great drivers of his era. Indeed, when his name is mentioned it's often merely to seek to demonstrate the point that statistics don't mean everything in judging drivers.

The common narrative is that Piquet had success in a team of one at Brabham, but then moved to Williams to pair up with Nigel Mansell and was 'found out', which heralded a lingering decline to his career, and which was ended by a young Michael Schumacher booting him out of the sport. But is this fair?

Retro F1: Gilles Villeneuve tribute - the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix

Hey y’all. The latest Retro F1 took place today. And given that this week marks the 30th anniversary of the passing of the legend that is Gilles Villeneuve, I decided this one should double as a tribute to the great man.

We therefore watched the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix, one of Villeneuve’s best ever drives, using the YouTube link below. The only drawback was that the commentary is in German, but we managed to work around that.



Retro F1 is when we watch a classic F1 race in full online, and chat about it on Twitter as we go, using the #RetroF1 hashtag. All are welcome!

Highlights of the Twitter chat are below.

Welcome all to the latest Retro F1, which is a Gilles Villeneuve tribute special, watching the 1981 Monaco GP. Here’s the link to the Monaco GP '81 race footage, I’m clicking play now :)

@CamillaKristel Should be interesting.
@kanemelegatti Ready guys?
@mario_eb Fuel in for Retro F1 :)
Hi Mario. Glad you could join us. Should be a good one :)
@mario_eb Hi Graham. Surely it'll be fun. Although my server's a little slow now I'll be following Retro F1 maybe I'll need my KERS ;)
Or your DRS.

@mario_eb Haha :D Ok, let me activate it :D

The Phoenix: Williams rises from the ashes

There was a time when Frank Williams was a joke figure in F1. Yes, seven world drivers' titles, nine constructors' titles and 113 Grand Prix victories later it seems an odd assertion. But for years Frank Williams was perceived as a forever struggling, stumbling presence in the paddock with cars invariably near the back of the pack.

He had success in his first year in the sport in 1969, claiming two second places running a privately-entered Brabham with Piers Courage driving, but after that point it appeared that Frank, year after year, was condemned to salvaging what he could from the latest failed project.

Piers Courage in a Brabham entered by Williams in 1969
Credit: Lothar Spurzem / CC

As everyone prepared for the start of the 1978 season there seemed little reason to re-evaluate that judgment. Recent form wasn't encouraging: in 1976 even with access to Canadian oil millionaire Walter Wolf's cash success for Frank's team was meagre, with no points scored. Further, after Frank was sidelined the Wolf team went on to claim three victories and finish in second place in the constructors' table the following season. And while this was going on Williams, starting again with his own operation, again scored no points competing with a private (and what turned out to be a long in the tooth) March.

His designer for the new season, Patrick Head, concurs: 'You've got to remember that Frank's reputation from his early efforts was not great. He was known as "W*nker" Williams...everybody thought his cars were just there to fill up the grid'.

Looking back: F1 wizards' first visit to Oz

As you're no doubt aware by now the Bahrain Grand Prix has been postponed, possibly to be shoehorned back into the calendar later this year. The season's opening round will instead take place in Australia on 27 March, around the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne. Seems something much more appropriate about that.

The Australian race is one of the most eagerly anticipated rounds of the season, such is the atmosphere and local enthusiasm it always engenders (it's a pity therefore that it currently seems to be under threat). F1 was nevertheless fairly slow to discover the potential of an Australian race, with the first visit there as late as 1985. What's more, anticipation of the initial visit was accompanied by considerable scepticism from the F1 circus. But on arrival this gave way rapidly to huge enchantment, probably of an even greater intensity than the Melbourne round currently enjoys.

When the first Australian Grand Prix, to be held around a street circuit in Adelaide, was placed as the final round on the 1985 calendar misgivings were widespread. F1's recent record at the time on newfangled street tracks was far from good: the Dallas round of the previous year wherein the track had fallen apart over the weekend, and there were several other organisational difficulties, was fresh in the memory, as were similar problems at Detroit and Las Vegas. Indeed, the record of such rounds even going ahead was somewhat patchy, such as the Flushing Meadows street race in New York which had been on the calendar for three years in a row and had yet to become a reality (and it still hasn't).

Looking back: 1981 - F1's strangest season

The recently ended 2010 season is commonly accepted as a great one. When thinking of great F1 seasons some readily spring to mind, such as the dramatic championship finishes of 1964, 1986 and 2008, or the competitiveness of 1974, 1997 and 2003, or even the drama and controversy of 1976 and 1989. The season of 1982 however tends to rise above others in such debates. It after all can boast no fewer than 11 different winners (for seven different constructors) in 16 races, no individual winning more than two of them. This all was alongside multiple acts of drama on and off the track, conducted in an atmosphere of extreme acrimony. Such is the myth that surrounds 1982 that it even had a specialist book about it written and published a quarter of a century later, by the sadly recently-departed Christopher Hilton.

However I feel that the season which preceded 1982, 1981, is somewhat forgotten about, and has a strong claim as a memorable and dramatic season. It can certainly match 1982 for controversy and acidity. Indeed, much of the 1982 politics were simply a continuation of those in 1981! The 1981 championship battle was tighter and went to the wire to a much greater extent than 1982's did. Plus the on track racing action (easy to forget in all of this) was generally much more diverting in 1981. It seems to have been lost in time somewhat that most of the races in 1982, i.e. the hour and a half on a Sunday, were soporific spectacles. And 1981 isn't far off 1982 in terms of variation of winners, no driver won more more than three races, the world champion totalled but 50 points, and in the final drivers' table no fewer than five drivers were within seven points of the top of the table. Eat your heart out 2010.

Even if one maintains that 1981 was not among the sport's greatest seasons, it certainly has a claim to being one the sport's strangest. It started with a race that never was in South Africa, attended by only 19 cars, the races were participated in by a field of cars, for the most part, in flagrant breach of the rule makers' flagship regulations, and it ended in a car park in Las Vegas, wherein the three contenders stumbled disastrously over the line, and Nelson Piquet claimed his first World Championship by a point, almost in spite of himself.