Frank Williams, the legendary British race car driver and founder of the Williams Formula One team, died at the age of 79 on Tuesday in his hometown of Maldon, south of London. After creating the team in 1977, Williams went on to claim six drivers’ titles in a career that spanned nearly 50 years. Williams had suffered for some time from depression and dementia, but maintained that he was one of the most fit people he had ever known.
A lifelong racing enthusiast, Williams started in the open-wheel sports car racing world before picking up the rules of the series, such as their weight and fuel requirements, and teaching himself them. The serious man of the track met up with an avid river swimmer, Eddie Irvine, who was encouraged to take up high-speed motoring by a relative, at a leisurely 10 mph. Four years after they started racing, Williams and Irvine founded their own one-make-only version of the McLaren M6 car, the Williams FW01. Williams moved his family to England in order to dedicate himself full-time to the team. A year later, the Williams FW31 claimed victory at the 1978 Canadian Grand Prix.
Both Williams and Irvine raced other cars before setting up their own team. The team began to gain attention in 1980 after Williams won two races with another of their name cars in Australia. In 1980, Williams won a championship in Hungary with a car built with his brother, Harry, by an Italian name. In 1982, Williams was knighted, and in 1982 he was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. While he eventually sold his stake in the team in 2003, Williams continued to be involved in the sport until his death.
During Williams’s career, he helped to push the sport forward, advocating for more driver safety to be taken into account. When three people died at the Fuji practice track in Japan in 1977, the Formula One authorities decided to add devices known as “headrests” that were fitted to cars, which covered the area of the drivers’ brains directly above the ear. Every driver today has a cushion of sorts behind the ear, but it was one of Williams’s innovations that helped bring the feature into use.
Read the full story at The New York Times.
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