The world according to Williams

Memo to the family of Claire Williams: next time this F1 boss gets a rare weekend at home, take her to the pub for Sunday lunch.

When I spoke with Williams (pictured) this week, she was in the middle of the most gruelling F1 timetable in history, still recovering from the super-busy British Grand Prix and… had spent her weekend ‘off’ cooking meals for her family and chasing flies around the kitchen.

In her own words, the Williams Deputy Team Principal – recently crowned Autocar’s top British woman in motorsport – was ‘absolutely knackered’.

But she still took time out to talk to me about her sport, and also about her heroes, her family and the opportunities and challenges for women and for Williams Martini Racing as a team in F1…

F1: The state we’re in

F1 bosses have announced even stricter controls on pit-to-car radio transmissions but Williams is adamant that such communications should not be banned.

She says: ‘Firstly, a lot of the public want to hear some of the communication – you’ve drivers getting cross on the radio and you just can’t ban radio completely.

‘Then there’s the safety aspect. You have to be able to communicate to a driver if there’s a problem with their car.

‘In this day and age, why can’t we relay that message when we’ve got these race cars that cost us all at fortune?’

Williams was talking before it was confirmed that teams could tell a driver about a problem ­– but the car must then either pit or retire.

The ghost of Ayrton Senna still haunts the Williams team, and safety remains paramount.

Asked if it was right to start the British Grand Prix under a safety car (pictured), to the frustration of many fans, Williams says: ‘Yes. I am a big proponent of safety in F1, as everybody in our sport is, and you do not want to take unnecessary risks.

‘I think it was right to start under a safety car – 100 per cent.’

Another area that has caused fans angst is the need for drivers to manage their tyre and fuel usage more than ever.

But Williams does not think this has damaged the sport as a spectacle, saying: ‘Formula 1 is an ever-changing landscape and we are always looking to set regulations to make our sport the best it can be.

‘Yes, of course sometimes we get it wrong – we’re only human, we make mistakes.

‘You can think the tyre situation is hurting Williams massively, with the tyre pressures that Pirelli are setting.

‘But we’re a Formula 1 team, and we have to be able to understand and analyse and work our way around such problems.

‘That’s the thing about Formula 1, that’s why we’re here; it’s to be on the cutting edge of technology and be set the challenge and problem, and try to solve it.

‘And I think the racing has been more exciting this year and has grown in excitement over the past three years.’

One of this season’s most contentious issues has been the application of rules on exceeding track limits, with plenty of F1 followers complaining that drivers are not being punished consistently and severely enough when they gain an advantage by drifting over the white lines.

Williams says: ‘There have been a lot of punishments handed out in the past few races for exceeding track limits, more than I have ever seen, so I think they are being punished enough.

‘We’ve seen incidents with these new donut kerbs – back in Austria, we had a car destroyed. That’s not a track limit issue per se – just by going off slightly you get punished. I’m not sure that it adds a huge amount to the spectacle for fans.’

Why Thatcher is my heroine

The Williams family had more than a passing acquaintance with Margaret Thatcher. After Claire’s father Frank, Team Principal at Williams, was paralysed in a French road accident in 1986, Thatcher (pictured, with Williams) arranged a police escort when he was flown home, and sent messages of support.

Sir Frank has always admired Thatcher, calling her a ‘fantastic lady’ who ‘had the bottle we want from our leaders’.

Claire Williams shares that admiration. She says: ‘I don’t pretend to be a feminist in any way, shape or form, but my hero, the first, would be Margaret Thatcher.

‘It probably says a lot about me; I’m like Dad.

‘She was the first British female Prime Minister and that was 40 years ago.

‘Disregard the politics, because I know she is hugely divisive. But, as a woman, she worked her way up and the world that she occupied was a very different place to how it is now.

‘We now put women on pedestals that are in big jobs; yet can you imagine running a country, one of the greatest world powers in the 1970s, being a woman? That is why she is a heroine of mine, rather than the policies she’s responsible for.’

Williams studied Politics at Newcastle University and still harbours a love of the subject.

She says: ‘Do you know, I’d love to be in politics,’ then adds, with a laugh: ‘I wouldn’t want to have to do the whole “work my way up" thing. But I’d like to be in the Cabinet…’

Does that mean her ideal job is currently occupied by Theresa May?

Williams laughs again and says: ‘That level of responsibility probably isn’t for me, I’m probably far too selfish with my time. I was thinking yesterday, I wonder if Theresa May is cooking for her family? And I thought, absolutely not – that woman will have been up for five hours before me and be asleep five hours after me.

‘There is no way that she’ll be catching flies around her kitchen, mopping floors. And I like doing stuff like that!’

Williams laughs, and adds: ‘Unfortunately, I cooked two roasts this weekend for my family. They all seem to think it’s perfectly acceptable to descend on me when I’m not working for a change, and expect me to cook lunches for them. So I’m absolutely knackered today.’

F1: Is it a man’s world?

Williams was proud to be named top British woman in motorsport by Autocar http://www.autocar.co.uk/greatbritishwomen

But does she think motorsport is doing enough in terms of gender equality?

Williams says: ‘There is a huge amount of work that we still need to do in the sport but I think we’re making inroads into it.

‘I don’t think you can now say there’s a lack of women in Formula 1. If you see how many women are now working behind the scenes in Formula 1, I think you’ll see it’s a very changing dynamic.

‘Because there are TV cameras focusing on a lot of the men in senior positions, it sends erroneous pictures – because women are working behind the scenes, you don’t often see them.’

Williams has spoken previously about the importance of hiring on merit – and that remains a huge hurdle in terms of hiring drivers.

She says: ‘For next season, no, there isn’t somebody (a woman) who we are looking at but I think there are more and more ladies coming up through the ranks.

‘It’s going to take probably a couple of years to find somebody to bring into the team – not in a racing capacity but in a development role. And we’re doing the background research into that at the moment.’

One of the ideas that has been floated in recent years is a women-only series – Williams is quite clear about the merits of that approach.

‘I’m quite opposed to segregation in that sense. One of the great advantages of our sport is that we are a global sport that “allows” – and I hate that expression – women to compete against men on a Sunday afternoon, and that can’t be said for many sports around the world. I think now to bring in a female-only championship would be just the wrong move.’

Drivers: The cash v crash debate

Pay drivers – those who get a place in a team largely because they bring large sponsorship deals – are a controversial topic in F1 but, for some teams, they are a very necessary controversy.

Williams says: ‘Clearly, as a team boss you want to put the best driver in your car – but sometimes it is either a question of that or making 400 people redundant. You have to weigh up the options you’re faced with.’

The current F1 grid has the youngest drivers in its history so would Williams prefer one of the young chargers or a more experienced hand?

She says: ‘I’m quite risk averse. I’d rather have experienced drivers I know could deliver for the team rather than taking a risk. We’re an independent team and the Constructors’ Championship is all important to us, so I’d rather have the security that brings – if I was going to get consistency, and a race car in one piece at the end of the race.’

That’s not to say Williams would never hire a young gun – Valtteri Bottas (pictured) was 23 when he got his F1 debut with the team.

Williams says: ‘I think we’ve yet to give Valtteri a car to really prove what he can do. If you put him in a Mercedes, he would be absolutely fantastic…’

As for next year’s drivers, Williams is remaining tight-lipped. Rumours that Jenson Button may be replacing Felipe Massa have remained just that, and both Button and Massa have the huge experience that Williams so admires.

Pressed about when the team will make a decision, she says: ‘Probably a few months away, though I wouldn’t want to leave it too late either.’

Dad’s advice: Don’t wind the Queen up

Williams received an OBE earlier this year. But how did Dad (pictured), himself a Knight, react?

Williams says: ‘I thought he’d be quite surprised, and go “What on earth have you got one of those for?”.

‘He actually said, “I’m very proud of you, well done… It’s about time”.

‘Then he told me to stop telling everyone the OBE was a credit to the team – which it is – otherwise the Queen might get rather cross with me and take it back.’

Despite the relentless pressures of F1, Williams says her relationship with Sir Frank has not changed over the years.

‘I’ve been lucky enough to have one of those really perfect father-daughter relationships with my Dad. There is a huge amount of love and admiration, I think, both ways and that hasn’t changed. We have a fantastic, genuinely, truly fantastic relationship and I am so lucky to be able to call him my Dad.

‘He is and always will be my idol and my icon and my hero, and it hasn’t changed, because it’s still his team and he’s entrusted that to me.

‘And until I… unless I go really wonky, and start doing a bad job, I’m sure that our relationship will remain intact.’

What about her management style, compared with her father’s?

‘Dad has this reputation for being a real hard-nosed, tough, tough businessman. But if you know Dad and you’ve encountered him, he’s a real softy.

‘He likes being lovely to people, treating everybody equally and with respect. He hates firing people – he’ll always get out of firing people.’

It’s not just about F1. The Williams team supports the Spinal Injuries Association – Sir Frank is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, tetraplegic, and his daughter wants to do even more for the charity.

She says: ‘The SIA has always been our charity but it’s been more in name and I feel that we should be doing a lot more to support them.

‘The amount of money in the bank account is just not enough to support the growing need out there. When the charity was set up 40 years ago, there was actually less need that there is now to do the work that they do.

‘Spinal injury isn’t a death sentence, it’s a change of your life and a very horrendous one, and for me obviously it’s a very personal charity because of the situation with Dad.’

Wanted: Money, speed, a smile from the gods

With a major shake-up to F1 rules on the horizon, there could be an opportunity to end Mercedes’ (pictured) dominance. Are Williams Martini Racing the team to do that?

Williams says: ‘It’s very difficult to have any level of confidence when you’ve got new regulations. If you don’t know what your competitors are doing, what performance they’ve managed to find, you’re operating a little bit in the dark.

‘We won’t really know where we all are until we get testing, if not the first two races.

‘The only thing I can have confidence in is the team here – we are old hands, managing new regulations. These regulations do afford us an opportunity to move forward, and we need that opportunity, we want that opportunity.’

In modern F1, thanks to the way the sport’s money is divided up, it’s fair to ask if there is any chance for the underdog at all.

Williams is bullish, saying: ‘Yes, I think there is. As a team we have won the Constructors’ Championship nine times, against teams that have always had bigger budgets than ours, you know, Ferrari and McLaren.

‘There always is the opportunity. We just have to be cleverer with our resource. And we are good at that; we’ve had to practice over the years to make sure that our budget worked as hard as it can for us.

‘Of course, you always want more money but I don’t think we need to double our budget to succeed. I think if we just had a little bit more… but, if we don’t, then we have to make do with what we’ve got and get on with the job. It’s all about the talent you have.

‘We could spend hundreds of millions in Formula 1 and not win. There is no reason why an independent team with a much smaller budget cannot compete and that’s what my ambition is, to prove that you can win a world championship.’

So what will it take to see this iconic team back at the very top?

Williams says: ‘Oooh, that’s a tricky question. I don’t think it’s any one thing or a magic bullet.

‘We have quite a bit of work to do to resolve our issues around slow-speed corners, making the car quicker in the wet, we probably need to get more money in, we probably need the likes of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull not to do quite such a good job…’

Anything else that could help?

Williams laughs, and says: ‘I believe that there is a little bit of luck involved, and a little bit of “smiles from the gods”. It will come – our time will come, I have no doubt.’