Italian Grand Prix: Williams finally give up the fight after soaking up the punches but legacy remains unblemished

To understand the magnitude of Williams’ departure from Formula One, you have to understand how hard a decision this was to make in the heads of Sir Frank and Claire Williams.

F1’s most famous father-and-daughter combo have been at the forefront of two different eras in the history of the Williams name. In an age when independent teams stood a fighting chance of conquering the world, Williams took the sport to new levels. Following their arrival on the grid in 1977, it took them just three years to win the title. They took Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill to world championships, along with five others that included Keke Rosberg, Nelson Piquet and Alain Prost in 20 trophy-laden years.

Alan Jones will forever be Williams’ first world champion, and Jacques Villeneuve, it now seems will forever be the last.

But Williams have not won the F1 world championship since 1997, and haven’t challenged for it since the 2003 season, when Juan Pablo Montoya finished in third, just nine points behind Michael Schumacher, in one of the all-time great campaigns.

As that decade developed, so too did the dominance of the big factory teams. Financial juggernauts Ferrari and Renault went to battle, before Mercedes took over after energy drink giant Red Bull’s sudden spell of dominance at the start of the 2010s. The ability for independent teams to consistently fight for top honours shrunk as budgets increased, and thus came the second act in the history of Williams as they slowly slipped back into the pack.

But they were always there. If it meant starting from the back of the grid and finishing laps behind their rivals, Williams were always there, always fighting in the corner of the quiet voice, daring to be heard.

Frank Williams knows more than most what it means to fight. He had to fight for all his worth to see his name on the grid in the first place, before having to fight even harder for his life. His original company, Frank Williams Racing Cars, was essentially ripped from his grasp in a sea of financial maelstrom in the 1970s, but it eventually led to the formation of Williams Grand Prix Engineering - the team that still exists today.

The 78-year-old survived a horrific road car accident in France in March 1986, which left him tetraplegic and in need of a wheelchair, but he remained in charge of his F1 team until torch was passed on to Claire in 2012.

Though she remained deputy team principal as Frank held on to the senior role, there has been no doubt whatsoever who has been running the Williams F1 Team. Every decision has been made with Claire’s approval, and she has faced every backlash head on.

Being a female team principal in a male-dominated sport has not been easy, and thus Claire has been forced to do what her father did best: fight for the Williams name. Earlier this year she found herself targeted by accusations that becoming a mother three years ago had distracted her from the team’s efforts. “How dare they,” came the response, noting that she is far from the only team principal in F1 to double up duties as a parent, with the realisation that she was being targeted because she is a mother, not a father.

"I would love to walk down the paddock this year having taken the team to a better place, not just to show all those people that they were wrong, but also to show that a woman can take a huge amount of criticism, still hold her head up high and keep fighting,” Claire said in March this year, before the start of the season was delayed by four months due to the outbreak of coronavirus.

"To prove that I can be a woman, I can be a wife, I can be a mother and still run a Formula One team in a successful way.

"In turn, hopefully it will send a very powerful message to those who are having a rough time or struggling.

"There are so many fundamental changes that need to take place within society as to how we address women in the workplace because it is so far behind the times."

Speaking honestly, Williams deserved to be criticised last year - but for their car and car alone. It was awful, the worst that the Grove-based team had produced in its history, as George Russell and Robert Kubica regularly made up the back row of the grid. Chief technical officer Paddy Lowe paid the price with his job, but the team knew another year of unacceptable results could not be maintained.

The aim this year, as Claire laid out, was to put the team in a better position. She will leave the sport after this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix in the knowledge that her and her father have done just that. Williams are no longer the slowest car on the grid, with every hope that they will score their first world championship points since July last year at some point this season. That improvement has put the team into a position where they are once again financially attractive, so much so that US investment firm Dorilton Capital completed a takeover last month.

It was thought that the Williams name would remain on the grid for the remainder of the 2020 season at the very least, but that is now not the case after the identity of their new owners was finally revealed on Thursday. Thus, Sunday’s Grand Prix at Monza will bring down the curtain on a 43-year legacy, when sadly the quiet voice will finally fall silent.

The team will continue in some shape or form, but when F1 arrives at Mugello the following week, it will do so without the Williams name for the first time in more than four decades. It is for the best, but the best doesn’t always have to feel right.