![]() Williams’s death was in 1997, and in his final years its drivers rarely placed, let alone won races. He spent more than a decade fighting charges of manslaughter before finally winning his case in an Italian court in 2005.īy then the Williams team was past its heyday, finally overtaken by its better-funded corporate rivals. Williams hired Ayrton Senna, one of the sport’s most promising young drivers, who died in an accident at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994. ![]() Piers Courage, his best friend and driver for his first team, Frank Williams Racing Cars, died in an accident during the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix.ĭecades later, Mr. He also confronted other challenges that might have led a less driven man to quit the sport. ![]() But within six months he was back at work. After he rolled his rented Honda off a French country road in 1986, doctors in Marseilles declared him clinically dead three times in the following days. Williams’s greatest achievements came after the accident that left him a quadriplegic. Seven of his drivers were crowned world champions, and his team won nine constructors’ championships, an honor given to the people or groups that design the cars - a feat that only Ferrari has surpassed. Instead, his genius was in the wheeling and dealing, the hiring and firing of drivers, the nurturing of engineering talent, and the thousands of other strategic and tactical decisions that go into making a successful racing team.ĭuring his 43 years at the helm of Williams Grand Prix Engineering, his drivers won 114 races, a number exceeded only by Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes. Williams never raced, nor did he design the cars driven to glory. “The Williams car of the early 1990s,” The New York Times wrote in 2016, “with its active suspension, semiautomatic gearbox, fly-by-wire controls and traction control, was so advanced that it led the series into banning most of the concepts for fear that the cars would end up being able to drive themselves with no need for a driver.”Įxcept for a few years early in his career, Mr. The Williams team dominated Formula 1 in the early 1980s and again in the ’90s, when its focus on technical innovation gave it an edge over teams sponsored by much larger and more well-financed corporate outfits. He exuded a childlike love for speed and cars during interviews he would sometimes pause when he heard the approach of a roaring engine, a boyish smile creeping across his face. He achieved that status as much through his team’s extraordinary record as through his own outsize public persona, at once ebullient and withdrawn, friendly and cutthroat. Williams was the rare manager whose name featured as prominently in the world of Formula 1 racing as his team’s drivers, who included stars like Damon Hill, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna. He had been admitted to a hospital for unspecified reasons two days before his death. His family announced the death in a statement but did not cite a cause. Frank Williams, a brash, hypercompetitive Formula 1 manager who overcame personal and professional adversity, including a car accident that rendered him a quadriplegic, to lead one of the most successful teams in the history of motorsports, died on Nov.
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