Obituary: Sir Frank Williams, motor racing principal

His story is made all the more extraordinary by the horrific car crash he suffered in France which left him with injuries so devastating doctors considered turning off his life-support machine.

But his wife Virginia ordered that her husband be kept alive and his sheer determination and courage – characteristics which personified his career – enabled him to continue with the love of his life, albeit from the confines of a wheelchair.

He would remain in his role as Williams team principal for a further 34 years before F1’s greatest family team was sold to an American investment group in August 2020 for £136m.

Francis Owen Garbett Williams was born in South Shields on April 16, 1942 to an RAF officer and a headmistress. Educated at St Joseph’s College, a private boarding school in Dumfries, it was there where he became obsessed with cars following a ride in a Jaguar XK150.

A travelling salesman by day, he fulfilled his racing ambitions at the weekend and, aged just 24, he launched his own team, Frank Williams Racing Cars.

Four years later, they were competing in Formula Two, and with flatmate and closest friend Piers Courage behind the wheel, Williams graduated to F1 in 1969 using a second-hand Brabham.

But tragedy struck at the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix. Courage ran off the track, one of his front wheels hit his helmet, and his car burst into flames. Courage’s grizzly death in a car bearing his name left Williams devastated. Broke and with spiralling debts, he reluctantly sold 60 per cent of his team to Walter Wolf in 1975.

But Williams was not made to be a back-seat driver and, desperate for independence, he severed ties with the Canadian businessman, set up shop at an old carpet warehouse in Didcot, Oxfordshire and signed a promising young engineer by the name of Patrick Head. The double act would go on to make grand prix history.

With Saudi Arabian funding – including from the Albilad hotel chain owned by Mohammed Bin Laden, the father of Osama Bin Laden – and the hiring of Australian driver Alan Jones, Williams Grand Prix Engineering became a tour de force.

At the 1979 British Grand Prix, Jones registered Williams’ first pole position before team-mate Clay Regazzoni took the team’s maiden win a day later.

In 1980, Jones delivered Williams their first title. The team also won back-to-back constructors’ championships, while Keke Rosberg was crowned drivers’ champion in 1982. But, in 1986, Williams’ life would change forever.

Following a test at the Paul Ricard circuit in March, he set off on a 98-mile dash to Nice Airport in a rented Ford Sierra. Travelling through the windy roads at speed, he lost control and the car dropped 8ft into a field, ending up on its roof.

Williams’ passenger, the team’s marketing manager Peter Windsor, escaped with minor injuries. But Williams suffered a spinal fracture which would leave him in the wheelchair for the rest of his life.

“I was late for a plane which I didn’t need to be late for because I got the French time mixed up with the English time,” he explained several years later.

“The roads were very bumpy, the hire car was not the world’s best, and suddenly I was off the road upside down and with a broken neck.”

Despite his injuries, Williams was back at the helm of his team within nine months. Over the ensuing 11 years, five further drivers’ championships – including those for Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill – as well as seven constructors’ titles, followed.

But there would be more heartache for Williams when Ayrton Senna was killed in just his third race for the British team at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Williams was knighted in 1999 but his team were never able to replicate their heyday of the 1980s and 1990s. He stepped back in 2013, the year in which his wife died, allowing Claire to assume the day-to-day running of the team.

Williams fought off pneumonia in 2016, but he has been an irregular fixture in the paddock for a number of years.

And, at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza last year, an historic sporting chapter was closed when the Williams family contested its 739th and concluding race after selling up to Dorilton Capital.

Williams is survived by his three children and two grandchildren.