Why Williams?

I recently drove past the Williams F1 team’s Oxfordshire HQ, en route to Wantage to see my Auntie Penny and Uncle Geoff. Nothing dramatic. Familiar stretches of Middle England roads, then a village roundabout with one road leading into the team’s HQ complex. But I felt a genuine surge of excitement passing this way – and realised I’ve been quietly favouring this team for more than forty years.

Why Williams?

Yes, it probably started with Mansell. Those late-80s seasons, the near misses, the Brummie moustache, the sense of effort and injustice rolled into one. Even when ‘our Nige’ decamped to Ferrari and then the US, I stayed put. It helped, of course, that Williams kept winning.

The Damon Hill years felt like a love affair. Would he win? Wouldn’t he? He did – already knowing he wouldn’t be there the following season.

My ardour for Williams dipped when Hill left. But it returned when he retired, and a young Jenson Button was given his chance in 2000. And somehow, through all the lean years that followed, I never really moved on.

I wouldn’t call myself a rabid fan. But I was overjoyed when Williams exceeded expectations with Carlos Sainz’s recent pair of podiums. Was it strange to be on the edge of my seat for a third place and a handful of points? Hardly the glory days of the 80s and 90s, of course. But when you’ve spent years just hoping to scrape into the points, a third place can feel almost as sweet as a championship.

So what is it about this team that’s held me for four decades?

I never warmed to McLaren’s clinical efficiency, or Ferrari’s glorious, myth-laden chaos. Benetton’s banditry left me cold. Renault’s Gallic insouciance never quite landed. Red Bull try a little too hard to be anti-establishment. Mercedes are impressive.. but a bit too industrially Teutonic.

Williams feel different.

They reek of an independent spirit. Of British engineering craftsmanship. Of people who exist to race, not to market themselves to death. Through the lean years, they kept turning up – not reinventing their identity, not shouting for attention, just doing the work.

There’s a quiet dignity in that. Especially in adversity.

And perhaps that’s the real answer. I didn’t choose Williams because they were winning. I stayed with them because they reflected how I like things to be done.