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Revision as of 08:39, 8 August 2005 by Stian1979 (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)- The name Frank Williams can also refer to Frank Abagnale, famed impostor and forger, or the actor Frank Williams.
Sir Francis Owen Garbatt Williams (b. April 16, 1942) is founder and manager of the WilliamsF1 Formula One racing team.
Born in County Durham, England, to an RAF bomber pilot and a special education teacher, Williams spent much of his childhood at a boarding school in Scotland. In the late 1950s a friend gave Williams a ride in his Jaguar XK150s; Williams was immediately hooked.
After a brief career as a driver and mechanic, funded by his work as a traveling grocery salesman, Williams founded Frank Williams Racing Cars in 1966; he ran drivers Piers Courage, Richard Burton, Tetsu Ikuzawa and Tony Trimmer for several years in Formula Two and Formula Three. Williams purchased an old Brabham Formula One chassis; Courage drove it in several F1 events, coming in second place twice.
In 1970 Williams undertook a brief partnership with Alessandro de Tomaso; after the death of Courage at the Dutch Grand Prix, his relationship with de Tomaso was over by the end of the year. In 1971 he raced Henri Pescarolo in a chassis he had purchased from March Engineering; 1972 saw the first F1 car built by the Williams works, the Politoys FX3 designed by Len Bailey, but Pescarolo crashed and destroyed it at its first race.
Williams, short on cash, looked to Marlboro and Iso, an Italian car company, for sponsorship. Though they pledged their support, they did not come through in time and in 1976 Williams desperately took on a partner, oil magnate Walter Wolf. Though the team continued functioning, it no longer belonged to Frank Williams, so he left in 1977 along with one of his old employees, engineer Patrick Head. The two acquired an empty carpet warehouse in Didcot, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom and announced the formation of Williams Grand Prix Engineering; this same team still competes in Formula One and is known as WilliamsF1.
A car accident where the rented Ford Sieera roll around in March 1986, while Williams was driving to the Nice airport from Paul Ricard Circuit in southern France, left him paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after he got the car's roof in the head causing the spine to brake. Peter Windsor, Williams's passenger, sustained only minor injuries.
In 1987 the Queen awarded Williams the title of CBE; he became a KBE in 1999. He is also one of the few non-Frenchmen to have been made a Chevalier of France's Legion d'Honneur; this honor was accorded for his work with the Renault team.
After 1 of may 1994 when Ayrton Senna da Silva was killed in a Williams f1 at Imola he was charged with murder after Italian law, but was finaly cleared after several years batle where other constructors say they would not race in italy if a acident could cause that kind of reaction.
At the moment son of Frank Williams Jonathan Williams is curently working for GP2 team iSport International and look to be good at spoting new talents.
References
- People: Sir Frank Williams. GrandPrix.com.
- Horton, Roger (1999). All Rise for the Honourable Sir Frank. Atlas F1.