[Formula 1 cars wailing]
[crescendo of cars]
[voice] Do you still get the same buzz out of it Frank?
[Frank] Absolutely.
Truth is I love it, the Formula 1 stuff, the real stuff,
the speed they're going through the corners,
it's super men so I really believe these guys meta morph
when they get into the cockpit you know.
They're immensely quick, and the grip round the corners
is just astonishing.
[racing cars revving]
[supersonic boom of airplane]
[Frank] If you're a pilot flying a jet,
that's wonderful work isn't it? Why?
Because I'm flying supersonic, twice supersonic.
[Frank] It blows my mind, the speeds at which they can control these cars.
What was it, Top Gun, what did Mav say to Goose?
He said “I feel the need, the need for speed",
I've never forgotten that.
- [interviewer] And you've always had that? - Sorry?
[interviewer] You've always had that?
Well I've always been a little boy for a start,
always enjoyed speed too.
That's why I finished up in a chair, going too fast.
[Claire] We didn't sit round the table as a family
and discuss it and go this is how we're gonna deal with it
or you know mum needs some counselling,
the kids need counselling, dad needs counselling to get through it.
We've never talked about it as a family, dad's accident, ever.
[Claire] If it wasn't for Mum I personally don't think.
Williams would necessarily be around.
I'm a really firm believer in Williams is not just always about Dad,
it's as much about Mum,
she stood by him through thick and thin, I mean she saved his life.
[violin plays]
[Formula 1 car wails]
[general chatter]
[car revving]
[Howden Ganley] Williams is unique now
in that it is the last of the old style teams
where the team owners all had their name over the door
and Williams is the only one left.
[fan] Frank's very rare at interviews nowadays
so he doesn't seem as approachable or accessible
from a, from a fan on the street.
Whether we see enough of him nowadays
and whether that's because of his health...
We didn't see him this weekend,
we saw Claire Williams knocking about on Friday.
She's a great face on the TV as well,
where, you know being interviewed and the like,
it's interesting to have a lady as Principal as well.
[Claire] I think I may have had like the odd grand dream
but I never thought I would be given the keys to the shop ever, ever, ever.
I think a bit of it's because I'm a girl and you know
I can't possibly understand anything about a car
and you know it's Dad's train set
and he doesn't wanna hand it over to anybody else.
[commentator] The Marussia of Will Stevens
gets out the way of Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen
but Verstappen's all over the back of that Williams.
[interviewer] What about Williams? Where do you reckon
Williams will place today?
[spectator] Uh... might get a point. One of the top ten maybe.
[interviewer] Do you think they're contenders anymore?
[spectator] No, no. Definitely not this year. No chance.
[cars wailing]
[interviewer] But Jacques, you were the last driver
to win a World Championship for Williams.
Yeah that's true, that's true.
- [interviewer] How long ago was that? - Uh... '97 so 20 years ago.
- [Frank] Yes. - [interviewer] Long time.
Too long really, yeah.
[commentator] In comes Bottas, goes for another set,
he's just given up, there's nothing they can do really
and I'm afraid that Williams are gonna come away
from Monaco with nothing.
[Claire] It's really frustrating,
it literally is banging your head against a brick wall, what do we have to do?
You know I have to walk around with my head held high
and I want to be able to do that um and I don't feel that I can at the moment.
[interviewer] Do you think Frank feels it as acutely as you do now?
[Claire] I'm sure he does, he's trusted in me
and I don't want him to ever doubt that trust that he's put in me.
[interviewer] Do you ever doubt it yourself or...
Um not right now no, I've got a lot of fight in me left.
[Frank] Claire is a tough piece of work,
whatever she sets out to do she always achieves it,
she's a bit like her mother, her mother was like that,
didn't make a lot of fuss, just did things.
[grass rustling]
[Claire] I love this time of the year with the Autumn coming.
These are my mum's blossom trees that we planted.
[laughs] They look a bit dead now.
These were the ones that we planted on her,
the anniversary, two year anniversary of her passing.
I wanted something here that I could come to and chat to.
- [interviewer] And do you do that? - Yeah I do, a lot.
[birds chirping]
I come and ask her why we can't fix our um,
[laughs] the wheel nuts on our pit stops and pray to her that
she might help the guys in R&D
that have been working so hard on them.
Right.
I've got a whole box of press clippings in there
from when I was made Deputy Team Principal.
I thought I would frame them and put them up
and be all proud of myself, but now they've just ended up in the shed.
[Claire] This is a lovely picture from when we won
the race in Barcelona with Pastor.
[interviewer] Was this the last time you won a race?
[Claire] Last time we won a race, Barcelona 2012.
So there's another picture of dad, someone sent that to me,
it's amazing, him lifting two wheel nuts, how buff was my dad? It's amazing.
It's was phenomenal how fit he was before his accident.
Oh this is an awful article that came out when mum did an extract from her book.
[Pamela] After the accident,
I think Ginny was on the edge of a nervous breakdown
and she found communication,
on an emotional level, very difficult with Frank,
Frank didn't do emotion
and she perhaps felt that
a book might be one way of getting the story across to him.
"I'm not usually given to making New Year's resolutions"
but at the end of 1988 I decided that I would spend the following year
setting down everything that has happened to Frank and me
"in the last two decades."
- [light clicks] - [Pamela] Yes.
These are the little micro tapes that, they took about 6 hours of conversation.
[Pamela] That goes in... there.
[beeping]
[interviewer] How long is it since you listened to these?
[Pamela] Probably not since I first transcribed them, which, so it is,
it's 25 years ago and I mean she sounds so alive today,
25 years later I can relieve that conversation.
I feel very sad that she's not here anymore.
[footsteps crunching on pebbles]
- Hello Pamela. - [Pamela] Hello... [cross speaking]
- [Claire] How are you? - [Pamela] No need to ask who you are.
I feel I should hug you or kiss you or something.
- [Pamela] Oh! - I feel I know you so well already.
- [Pamela] Well looking at you... - I feel I know you so, really yes.
- [Claire laughs]. - Is it a bit weird.
- [Pamela] It is weird yes. - Really? Do I look like mum?
[Pamela] You do.
[Claire] It was so weird because I didn't,
she obviously didn't tell anyone in the family,
but there was all this kind of quite suspicious behaviour going on,
kind of sneaking out or you know I find the Dictaphone in her glove box.
I was convinced she was having an affair and confronted her with it
and she still didn't tell me that that's what she was doing.
She actually met Frank
about three months before she was due to get married
and that her fiancé introduced her to Frank
and there was an instant sort of electric connection
between her and Frank,
she was only, I think 20, she was very young
and she thought, “What can I do?
"The flowers are ordered, the wedding oh..."
Well she was blonde, blue eyes, beautiful thick head of hair,
beautiful manners, beautiful clothes, came from quite a wealthy background.
[Peter] She had this lovely way of speaking.
Great sense of humour.
And she loved motor racing, she understood motor racing.
She had a very good feel for racing drivers.
[Jamie] Frank probably thought you're not gonna believe it,
she went to a finishing school in Switzerland,
they've got Labradors in the garden, I've cracked it.
I suspect that's what he told his mates.
I mean she was just a fantastic girl to talk to,
it was like talking to a fella, but you know with, wearing Chanel No. 5
it was just brilliant.
[Jamie] But in those days, to back out of a marriage
or a looming wedding was almost impossible to do,
you know invitations had gone out and stuff like that
and it would've been very tough for her to, to pull the plug on it.
[Pamela] Anyway she went through with the wedding
but this attraction didn't go away.
[Claire] It was the charm, it was the Frank William's charm I think,
that smile and the big green eyes and mum just went loony.
[Dave Brodie] You know, I remember going to cross a road
and she's sitting in a Mini car,
I said, “What you doing here?”
"She said “Brode, don't say anything to anybody"
and she had a flask and sandwiches and she'd been sitting there from nine o'clock
hoping Frank would go across the road and buy a paper at the newsagents
and she could get out and say.
"Oh Frank, fancy bumping into you here"
and she didn't do it once, she did it all week.
[Claire laughs].
[Claire] It was a real magical world, the world Frank started racing,
it was this, you know, boys club and I think Frank,
he loved being a part of it, and maybe because
he hadn't been a part of a, a gang, a group
when he was you know in his childhood.
[Frank] My father left, he was a bomber pilot, left my mother.
My mother brought me up.
She did bring me up pretty much single-handedly.
[Claire] They lived in Jarrow in South Shields,
that was a difficult environment,
difficult to make your way out of and my grandma made the choice,
she would sacrifice the normal home environment
in order to try and give dad a better chance in life
by giving him this education.
[steam train whistles]
[Frank] My first memories were being sent to
a Roman Catholic convent, I was about, just coming up for five
and I used to run away at the railway station
and they used to ring up and say he's here again,
please stop this happening again,
whenever I got back, the school they took my little trousers down
and hit me with a, a coat hanger.
I didn't mind, I was quite happy at the school.
- [interviewer] You were happy at school? - [Frank] I was happy at the school, yes.
[interviewer] So, and why did you run away then?
Uh... because I wasn't that happy. [Laughs]
No, but it was, I also loved trains, I love trains and movement,
I was always trying to get a ride in a car,
you know when someone's dad turned up with a car,
I was all over the car
and sometimes they gave me a ride up and down the road in it.
I was, I was nuts about cars by then.
[Frank] I did qualify for uni but I had no interest,
because I was uh... in a convent for three years, one year at a day school,
then another nine years locked up as well,
I was kind of keen on freedom.
I'd bought for £80 a racing A35,
it was a hot little ship I can tell you, very quick car
and that's how I got into motor racing proper.
[Dave Brodie] He was totally obsessed by motor racing.
I mean, to a degree that was ridiculous. Ridiculous.
Nothing else mattered.
I don't think he's ever been in a supermarket in his life.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Dave Brodie] Frank, when he first went there,
there wasn't any room for him so he slept in the lock ups
down the side there in a sleeping bag.
Everybody had a nickname.
Roger Bunting was Bunt, Charles Lucas was Charlie Luke,
Piers Courage was called Porridge, and Franks was called Wanks.
Ah is Wanks around? [laughs] No he'll be in later.
Oh okay.
[Frank Dernie] They were all aristocratic, wealthy guys
who wanted to go motor racing and Frank was mixing with them.
And he wasn't either aristocratic or wealthy.
[Dave Brodie] Well, all the other guys that live in that flat
had hereditary incomes. Frank didn't, nor did I,
so Frank had to earn some money.
So the way he earned money was to buy and sell parts.
And every waking moment he was chasing around the country
buying stuff for a pound and selling it for 2 pound.
He called himself Frank Williams Racing Cars in the end.
The motivation behind the organisers
wanting certain drivers was that in France they had to have Matre,
they had to have Beltoise and Servoz-Gavin starting.
Italy had to have a Ferrari on the grid.
And I guess England particularly wanted to be RM.
[Howden] He seemed to me to be the ultimate wheeler dealer.
And then he expanded and expanded and pretty soon
he was selling a lot of cars to European drivers particularly in Italy.
[Dave Brodie] So Frank would get a phone call from an Italian customer.
“Hey Franks, what are you gonna give me
"for my car I need a new Brabham?"
“I'll give you X for it." “Okay, I'll come and get it."
He's got an order from the same customer
for a brand new car.
He'd then take that car apart,
repaint it, re-electroplate it, re-polish it
and it would be, 3 months later, a totally immaculate brand new looking car
with a brand new chassis number that he got out the back door at Brabham.
The guy would then get the car back
and what he actually got back was the original car.
I know one guy had the same car for at least 3 years
but he thought he got a new car every year.
[Pamela] Ginny had grown up in a very sheltered environment
and suddenly there was this man who didn't go by the rules
and he was very exciting.
[Dave Brodie] We'd go to parties on a Saturday night
and Frank's dancing with Ginny and it's getting obscene
and her husband has got daggers coming out of his eyes
"and I walked up to Frank and I said “Frank, what the fuck are you doing?"
I said you can't be doing this, have a normal dance,
I mean you know the only thing he wasn't doing was having sex,
and Frank said, “Oh I hadn't noticed" and Ginny said, “Well I certainly hadn't"
[laughs] but everybody else had.
And then of course the show was on the road then with them two.
[Pamela] And she moved into a flat
and then she thought, “How do I let Frank know that I'm here?
Because I mustn't let him know that I, left my first husband because of him,
"that would scare him off."
So he didn't drink but what he loved was fresh orange juice,
so she wrote a letter,
'if you fancy some fresh orange juice, it's now being served at... ',
and she put her new address and a day or two later
[doorbell rings] the doorbell rang
and he turned up at the door.
[interviewer] Looking for some orange juice?
Looking for some orange juice, obviously. [Laughs]
[fanfare]
[commentator] And they're away...
[commentator ♪2] I saw Frank Williams make a very good start from the back,
he's now in third place from about the third row of the grid,
that's very good indeed.
[Dave Brodie] Back then his whole thing
was to be the greatest racing driver in the world.
[commentator] ..who's the yellow car sneaking through there?
[commentator ♪2] Frank Williams.
[commentator] It's Frank, look at him sneaking,
what a battle with these two saloons. My word...
[Dave Brodie] He was racing saloon cars,
but for some reason,
he never had an in built limit,
he would just go faster and faster and faster
and fly off the circuit.
- [commentator] And who's off there? - [commentator ♪2] Frank Williams.
[commentator] Frank Williams trying too hard,
Frank always very fast but very hairy and he's living up to it.
[Howden Ganley] When I started doing uh... Formula 3
sometimes I would encounter people who would say to me
do you know that chap Frank Williams?
Yeah, I know Frank Williams, oh, he's so fast and he,
and he crashed here and he overtook here
and he did all kinds of things.
So Frank had this amazing reputation as someone who was lightning fast,
not always staying on the road.
[Dave Brodie] There were a lot of races, he would've won,
but he ended up spinning the car and having accidents,
he just didn't have a limit
and that extended to his road driving as well.
- [interviewer] Well what was that like? - [Dave Brodie] Diabolical.
[interviewer] Where did you learn to drive?
[Frank] In my mother's Morris 1000,
she was very reluctant to lend it to me,
and she was right because in the end I did roll it on its roof.
[interviewer] But you rolled a few cars in your time.
[Frank] Not that many, no.
[interviewer] Well it's just that every time we talk about a car
it seems to be one that you've rolled.
[Frank] Well I haven't talked about that many cars though have I?
[interviewer] But didn't you, what was your first racing car'?
- A35. - [interviewer] What happened to that?
[Frank] That got rolled [laughs].
[friend] He was nothing but competitive, against himself in a road car,
it was almost at the point, where he would start a stopwatch to see
if he could beat his previous time from A to B.
[Dave Brodie] And I think it dawned on him that
pretty soon he was gonna hurt himself,
you can't have that many accidents on the road and in the, on race tracks,
you know you end up hurting yourself, especially back then
when the cars were lethal.
[car revving]
[Frank] What got me into Formula 1 was only the fact
that after two or three years of racing rather dangerously around the continent
it became apparent that I might have lots of uh... courage
but nothing like enough skill to go with it.
At the same time I became very friendly with a young man called Piers Courage
who was a brilliant driver.
[Dave Brodie] And the opportunity came for Frank
to build a Formula 1 car and Piers agreed to drive it.
And then Piers and I set off in 1969.
[Peter] Piers Courage was an ebullient,
fashionable Formula 1 driver
that captured the imagination of everybody who loved Formula 1
and Piers was just, Frank's idea of what a Grand Prix driver should be like.
[Frank] He was just bouncy, easily charming,
had a beautiful wife whom half of London was chasing.
[Dave Brodie] Apart from being a great looking fella,
never had a hair or a piece of clothes out of place,
he was always the smartest guy,
buttoned down blazer, grey flannels, Gucci shoes, he looked almost holy.
[Peter] And I remember him making a speech,
he had a slight sort of English public school stammer
and I remember the interviewer saying “So Piers,
"how's your car gonna go this weekend?"
"And he said, “Well I think it'll go like an absolute b-b-b bomb actually."
[presenter] Hoping to go one better than his second placing last year
was Piers Courage in the very promising.
Frank Williams backed De Tomaso.
[Piers Courage] I remember last year, my right foot
terrific cramp in, cramp in it
and also the great blisters on my hands from the gear changing.
[Frank] Well I kind of adored Piers in many ways but in those days...
it was "Piers is wonderful, this is my mate."
I thought the world of him.
[Howden Ganley] Piers and Frank were great together,
they were almost made for each other I think,
you had Piers who was really developing as a driver
and Frank was really developing as a team owner, constructor.
[Frank] Second place at Monte Carlo, can you believe that?
Second place the US Grand Prix, can you believe that?
5th at Silverstone, a great run.
[Dave Brodie] Everybody wanted to be a racing driver and Piers was on his way,
he'd beaten Jackie Stewart and Jim Clark
and he was a really, really good driver.
♪ Lark Ascending J' ♪ Vaughan Williams ♪
And suddenly he dies in this horrendous accident in Frank's car.
[Jackie Stewart] I was in the race
and it was a terrible accident involving us knowing that it was Piers
that had the accident because his helmet came off.
[I climax of Lark Ascending I]
[interviewer] And when you heard the news,
how did you hear the news?
Well it was, all I will say is that it was a major shock,
I was very young, you don't expect a shock like that
and I remembered, I went to the race organiser,
a man called John Corschmidt
and I said, “John, just tell me is Piers dead?
"Are you sure he's dead?"
And he said I'm sure and I said tell me that again,
he told me, “He is dead Frank", three times, I said "OK"
and I got up and I had the job of telling his wife, Piers' wife,
and I'd rather not talk about that.
[Jackie Stewart] His wife, Sally, was in a terrible state.
Wives in motor racing I think have had a much tougher life than any driver has.
[Dave Brodie] And I remember going to the funeral and Frank was fantastic,
he stood at the entrance of the church and welcomed everybody in,
and there were a lot of people,
shook hands with everybody, thanked them for coming.
And then after the ceremony we couldn't find him
and I walked back into the church, it was deserted
and Frank was standing behind a big stone pillar, absolutely destroyed,
standing there weeping his heart out
"and I said “Come on love, let's go home."
And it was like that happy-go-lucky scene we had,
just dissolved like that.
But I know that, you know, it wasn't really mentioned in,
Piers wasn't mentioned terribly much at home,
I'm not sure dad ever, I'm not sure how you would get over
a driver dying in your car.
[Patrick] This ability of Frank to carry on,
for me ifs fairly standard in motor racing, knowing racing people,
most of them only think of tomorrow, very rarely do they look back
and very rarely do they allow emotion to come into their motivation.
[Howden Ganley] There was a very high mortality rate,
stupidly high
and it was just accepted that you probably weren't gonna survive,
I personally did not think I would survive my Formula 1 career
and the odds weren't very good.
[commentator] On the second lap, disaster strikes,
Von Trips loses control but the race goes on.
[Dave Brodie] Those cars were effectively death traps,
if you had a head-on in one of those
they folded up round you like an envelope,
You didn't get out of them.
[Frank Dernie] The cars so readily caught fire,
the fuel systems in a minor impact
nearly always sprung a leak and the fires were the thing.
[Jackie Stewart] We had a series of deaths,
one each weekend for four consecutive weekends, four of our friends died.
[Peter] The ethos of Formula 1 was back then, this happens,
ifs appalling but we, you know, we're going to the next race,
like falling off a horse, you climb back on again.
So this is an article, gosh,
dad did an interview with The Times after Ayrton died.
'Formula 1, one of the most powerful figures
in Formula 1 bares his soul
on his star driver's death and the revival of his team.'
Dad says, “It hasn't all sunk in yet, you see, the fact of Ayrton's death,
the same slowness of thought helped me get over my own accident,
"I suppose that is why I'm so calm about expressing the fact that he's dead."
[Moira Stuart] The former world motor racing champion,
Ayrton Senna, has been pronounced clinically dead.
Senna suffered serious head injuries when his car left the track
and crashed into a concrete wall.
[Claire] I remember at Ayrton's memorial service.
Mum said don't you dare cry, she said this is not your time to be sad,
she said this is not your loss.
Mum was a very loving lady but she was very much of that mentality,
stiff upper lip, exactly like dad.
I think they both probably thought that emotion was weak.
Well I mean it's not common for men to show emotion,
serious emotion, maybe anger but that's about all,
I mean you should never start crying or any of that stuff.
[interviewer] Never, you should never start crying or...?
We, I was, I was,
I shed a few tears when Piers was killed definitely.
Mm... And when Ayrton, when Ayrton died,
I mean they're my responsibility.
- [interviewer] When Ayrton died? - Yeah sure.
But, er, it was out responsibility,
he was in a racing car operated by us, as was Piers.
Yeah it was a Williams operated car.
[interviewer] And so how did you feel on that day?
[Frank] Far from well.
[horn blowing]
[commentator] Here he comes down the outside,
that's a brave place to try and overtake.
[Claire] Oh mama mia, mama mia, oh they're gonna touch.
[commentator] Bottas has a line! They hit! They hit!
- And Raikkonen's off this time. - Good, fuck off.
We are operating on a budget of approximately 110 million Sterling a year.
And the likes of Red Bull and Ferrari and Mercedes
are operating on two if not three times that budget.
So from a financial perspective you could call us an underdog,
I think that's the, the negative connotation for me
is it gives this sense that Williams are weaker than anyone else,
but we're not, we've been through a lot more than a lot of teams on the grid
and we've always come out fighting.
[commentator] And it's Bottas who finishes in third place,
superb podium for him after the incident with Raikkonen earlier...
[interviewer] Finally, a podium for Williams.
So happy, my heart hasn't stopped going yet, that was quite intense...
[announcer] Third place from Finland, Valtteri Bottas.
[cheering and applause]
[interviewer] And did your mum get to see you in this role?
No she didn't, um which...
you know for me is really sad, it's kind of heart breaking really.
I'm sad about that but Pm more sad that she hasn't seen the team turn around,
because that was what she desperately wanted to see
that broke her heart really at the end.
I began to realise that if I do want a wife
that she was the best I was ever likely to find.
Well it wasn't, it wasn't a posh wedding, you know with white stuff everywhere,
it was a, what do you call that thing, a reg, a reg, registry whatever.
- [interviewer] A registry office. - Thank you very much.
[Claire] I think dad had said that he would son' the registry office out
and never did and would get the rings but he didn't have any money
so Mum had to borrow money from
um Dave Brodie I think it was that bought the ring.
So that's it, I went there quarter of an hour early,
gave them £8.00, never got that back, didn't expect it back.
[Pamela] It was all over in 15 minutes.
Her parents certainly weren't there,
I'm not sure they approved uh... of the match.
Out we went and I said, "Oh this a great day",
let's have a celebration, I'm gonna buy you all a spectacular lunch."
Frank said, “Not me you're not, I'm working”
and he fucked off, that was it. [laughs].
I don't know what man in his right mind
would think that that was OK but you know Dad did,
and Dad went back to work and Mum went to lunch
and probably really didn't think very much of it,
because she was used to it by then.
Dad is a completely different beast to most normal men.
[Howden Ganley] Frank from when I first met him was,
always seemed very fit and athletic
and he was forever running, every night was a long run.
[Franke Dernie] He ran every circuit that we were at the race track,
he used to run round it and he felt bad if he didn't,
you know it was like a drug for him.
[Patrick] Frank is very, what would be called focused,
some people could say narrow,
I mean, some people find Frank a bit unusual now
and think it's because of the accident, well it isn't, he was always very unusual.
[Keith Botsford] In Frank there 's a huge amount of repression,
there's a huge amount of determination.
There's an extraordinary retentive obsessiveness.
I suppose, motor racing people in general
are the most intensely competitive people, I've ever known.
They're not very mature intellectually or culturally
because they neither read nor think uh... very much except about
what they actually do to which they think in an extraordinary degree.
I've never been close to Frank socially. I mean, we've never... [exhales]
I don't, I don't think we've ever been out for dinner together.
[Dave Brodie] He felt that anything that involved socialising
and having a drink or relaxing was actually a waste of time.
[Claire] “I am addicted to motor racing",
Frank Williams declared uncompromisingly,
motor racing is what matters most in my life and then he goes,
“Well I have a family which I love very much,
but they tend to take second place to the business,
"there's no question about that" [laughs].
[interviewer] But did you used to do the family holiday type thing?
Never done that, never.
Oh it's too late now anyway, never interested in that.
[Claire] Oh my god, well this is embarrassing,
Mum wanted a hotel to take the three kids to
and family tradition was to have a picture of all of us
on the balcony with Mum, so that's me and Mum there,
so would've been when I was 16, look at me, horrendous.
So in total we went to Marbella with mum 32 times, 32 years.
[interviewer] How many times did your dad come?
Never, not once.
- [interviewer] And that didn't bother you? - No.
Mum always used to tell us, there's no point having your father here
because he would drive us all mad,
so we just used to go down there and we had a lovely time.
[cars revving]
[Frank] Can you get that wheel, fast as you can, the bottom one.
Joe have we got another wheel mounted?
[indistinct conversation]
[Claire] Frank endured a lot of piss taking for his efforts
and you know he was the poor northerner
that didn't have a pot to piss in
and his cars were rubbish and, you know, he didn't have half the parts for them.
[Patrick] Frank couldn't afford new tyres
and was racing with second hand Firestone tyres I think.
[Frank] I wish they'd ban tyres, there's just too many.
[Frank Dernie] If Ginny hadn't been there,
Williams wouldn't have made it, cause a lot of the money
that kept it going was hers.
[Dave Brodie] I remember Ginny gave him £8.00 once
to go out and buy some fish and chips, I think it was
and he went out and bought eight Champion sparking plugs
and never came back for three days.
No I don't think my parents were happy when they learnt
that she'd sold her flat to help Frank and to give him a bit of the money.
If there was a common denominator through
the first decade of his relationship with Virginia, would be penury.
[commentator] Frank Williams' team is at its lowest ebb
the cars are well down the grid in seventh and ninth places.
[Dave Brodie] Frank came round to see me
"and said “Brode I can't carry on"
and he had a bit of paper with debts on it and they were huge,
and then overnight uh... this guy who had been creeping around with Frank
and giving him little bits of money, Walter Wolf,
did something that happens in business all the time.
[applause]
[Patrick] Walter bought out Frank's debt
and took control of the Williams Formula 1 team.
[Frank] Walter was clearly a pretty clever business man
he'd made a fortune many, many tens of millions by himself.
I thought let's give this a crack.
[Patrick] But by half way through 1976,
it was very plain to Walter that the race team wasn't running well,
and that Frank didn't have the capability to turn it around.
[Dave Brodie] And then Frank went to the factory,
put his key in the front door,
it wouldn't work. Then, the side window opened and a guy said,
“Frank that's your things there, you can't come into the factory,
you're banned from the factory now”.
He couldn't believe it, he'd been locked out of his own factory,
it was his life, his life was in that box and inside that factory.
[car revving]
And then six weeks later, Frank's car, which was renamed 'The Wolf',
went down to South America won its first race.
[applause]
The thing that Frank had been living for, for all those years.
[crowd cheering]
[Dave Brodie] One day, Ginny phoned me up and she said,
“Brode I've got a lot of problems with Frank, he's in a fit of depression,
"he hasn't got out of his pyjamas for six weeks."
Sol turned up 11 o'clock and I looked at him and I said,
“What the fuck's going on here Frank?
"You've got your pyjamas on."
"And he said “Brode, I can't quite get my mind together about things"
and I knew what was killing him.
[car revving]
[Dave Brodie] I said to Frank,
"“Look there must be some way you can get into Formula 1 again."
"And he said “Well I don't know, I don't know" he said,
“but I've been thinking about it and I might be able to get 185,000
out of a Belgian beer company called Belle-Vue
but we'd have to have a Belgian guy called Patrick Néve as driver.”
"I said “So what? That's the start of a new Formula 1 team."
“Do you think so?“ I said, “Yeah Frank“,
"I said “get out of them poxy pyjamas and go to work, do what you're best at."
[Dave Brodie] We sat at my kitchen table and I said right,
"“You do a list of Formula 1 team names and I'll do a list."
[interviewer] And what was the name that you came up with?
Oh it was really tough, very testing, very brain stretching
but we kept it Williams Grand Prix Operating Limited.
[Dave Brodie] I said “Right I'm taking 2 days off.
We're gonna go find a factory." "Yeah!" he went.
[hammering]
[twisting, bolting]
[engine revving]
[Frank] It was very much hand to mouth but uh...
I loved what I was doing
I'm very optimistic and I felt it would all come right.
At the end of the day, when you're a racer, you're a racer,
- it's a bit of a bug. - [interviewer] A bug?
[Frank] It gets you.
[7]
[car revving]
[commentator] 140,000 fans packed into Silverstone,
so Hamilton's on the right as we look at it, Nico Rosburg on the left,
the British Grand Prix about to get under way,
lights out, away we go and who's it gonna be,
it's a good start from the second row, the Williams and Massa,
Williams out getting both cars past both Mercedes.
[commentator] Massa leads, Bottas trying to get
second from Hamilton,
Hamilton in a bit of trouble but he's fighting back
but we have a race on our hands, what a start from the Williams guys.
- I think Valtteri is quicker. - He is quicker, he should pass them.
[Claire] He should pass them.
[commentator ♪2] Be careful, be careful! And he's off!
Hamilton goes off in his attempts to try and rest the lead
and that might give an opportunity here for Valtteri Bottas.
Bottas goes into second place.
And up front ifs Williams one and two at the moment.
[commentator] Bottas comes in from the race lead
as Lewis Hamilton continues around the track,
let's see how the stop goes for Valtteri Bottas, ifs pretty good,
Hamilton's already along the start finish straight, he's alongside,
Hamilton retakes the lead and where does Bottas come back out?
He comes back out behind his team mate, Felipe Massa.
Oh, Hamilton is pulling away in front.
Lewis Hamilton wins the British Grand Prix,
he had to fight for it,
ultimately Williams have to settle for fourth and fifth
but you have to feel for Williams.
[reflective background music]
[background music shifts]
[presenter] Patrick Head is the technical genius inside Williams,
the engineer swot who
bestows power on the charismatic leader.
When I met Patrick, which is the best thing,
apart from marrying the wife I married,
was the best day to ever happen to me in my life.
He was a gifted engineer.
[Frank Dernie] Patrick is a person who, he doesn't suffer fools gladly...
[Dave Brodie] Oh he's a bully, if he wanted it
and it wasn't coming he'd bully his way through.
[Franke Dernie] A lot of people are frightened of him,
you know he's a broad guy and he can be quite aggressive looking
but his character is not one that junior employees found comfortable,
you know what I mean, they knew when they had made a mistake [laughs].
[Patrick] I think most of my father's forbears were military,
one of them General Michael Head had been a soldier under Wellington,
I think not wanting to fail was a very strong motivation.
This car's half a second slower on the stop watch than the other car.
Yeah.
[Dave Brodie] The thing that was unique, that Patrick brought to the show,
he was responsible for making Formula 1 reliable.
So Frank's cars almost instantly finish races,
which they hadn't been doing before
and that's where life changed for Williams.
[presenter] The British teams have kept ahead with innovative designs,
the most recent being the aerodynamic skirt,
a rigid panel that scrapes along the ground
between the front and rear wheels,
creating a phenomenon called ground effect.
[Pen squeaks]
For Frank Dernie a simple graph
shows the rise in suction under the Williams wood skirts.
If you remove the skirt you actually get so little flow in this area...
[Frank Dernie] The thing that really made a big difference
was a fairing along the side of the engine
which allowed the flow to remain attached
all the way to the back and I tested that in a wind tunnel test
just before Silverstone in 1979
and it was the biggest gain of performance I've ever seen on a car
so I rushed back from the wind tunnel and drew the parts
and we got them made so we could use them at Silverstone.
[Alan Jones] I remember going out there
and hopping in it for the first time
and thinking bloody hell.
[interviewer] What was the difference with the car'?
[Alan Jones] It was better [laughs] it was just better.
Don't start getting me, trying to be technical
because I'll look like a complete goose. [laughs]
[Patrick] We went to the test and in the morning,
everybody had been running and I think the best lap time would of been uh...,
I dunno 12.9 or something by somebody and Alan went out,
I remember the time absolutely, he did a one minute 11.88 just like that,
bang, and the rest of the pit lane were doing mid 13s
and it was most peculiar because you were standing there with your thing
and everybody went... and looked down at us,
they couldn't, they just could not believe it.
[Murray Walker] In practice, Alan Jones in the Saudia Williams
has slashed an incredible seven seconds off the record,
and that's a lot these days.
[Frank] Alan was a man's man,
he was an Aussie, it's all you expect from an Aussie,
maybe you know big character, strong personality,
took no nonsense from anybody.
[Patrick] He liked his fun, he liked to drink,
though I think he always had a bit of a struggle keeping his weight down.
After a race you'd nearly always see him
pouring a beer down his throat or two or three.
In motor sport there's two good reasons to have a bit of a drink,
one is to commiserate and one is to celebrate,
so you're pretty safe either way you're gonna have a beer.
[Murray Walker] Two Williams in the first two rows,
the incredible veteran, the Swiss driver, Clay Regazzoni.
[commentator ♪2] Well Clay's not as quick as he used to be
he's now very much a number 2 driver
he's number 2 to Alan Jones in the Williams team.
[Frank Dernie] We all sort of expected Regazzoni
to be quicker than Jones but he never was.
Jones turned out to be much, much better
than any of us had realised I think.
[Murray Walker] Now all ready for the 68 lap British Grand Prix.
[collective roar of cars]
And punching through, it's the two Saudia Williams cars,
first into Copse Corner and they're coming through, that's Jabouifle.
Jean-Pierre Jabouille is going to go through,
he's got tremendous speed and power here.
510 horsepower and it is still, Alan Jones leads now.
[Frank] When Alan took the lead quite quickly and just disappeared,
Patrick and I were just counting the laps, praying for the laps to keep reducing
because it, there was a new car, it wasn't necessarily reliable,
and witnessed what was about to be a major event for the team.
This became a reality.
[Murray Walker] And Alan Jones pulling away now.
[Alan Jones] Well I was leading very comfortably but then all of a sudden,
in the rear view mirrors I saw a hell of a lot of smoke
coming out of the back of the car
and I thought there was something wrong for sure.
[Murray Walker] And that is trouble for Alan Jones
and he, the way he's coasting, it looks as though he's burst his engine.
[Alan Jones] I mean I should've hung around for the end of the race
but I was that pissed off I just jumped in my car
and went back to London at about 300 mile an hour.
[Murray Walker] So Clay Regazzoni is the new leader
of the 33rd British Grand Prix.
Clay Regazzoni almost home to win the first race ever
for the Williams team and Frank Williams will be beside himself with joy.
[crowd cheers] And Clay Regazzoni goes across the line
and he has won the British Grand Prix.
We were so much quicker than anyone else,
even though Clay was nowhere near as fast as Alan
and of course when Alan broke down he won.
[Dave Brodie] We won a British Grand Prix,
I mean you couldn't put it in a book, it was incredible.
[racing interviewer] Clay, what is so good about this Williams car?
[Clay] Everything, everything flaughsL.
It was the first win for Frank Williams in Formula 1
since he started over a decade previously.
[racing interviewer] Frank Williams, this must be the happiest day
of your motor racing life.
No doubt about that, you're right yes.
[racing interviewer] Frank, what were your feelings
during those last few laps?
Well sheer terror that the car wouldn't finish,
we'd lost Alan and I was terrified of losing Clay but the car was very sweet.
[racing interviewer] Frank we've watched you struggling,
if I may say so, in motor racing since 1969.
Frank Williams, a man who's kept trying for Britain,
many congratulations Frank, thank you very much.
[crowd applauds]
I think my parents just,
after everyone had gone, just sat there,
just on the sofa of the caravan arm in arm
and just didn't want the day to end, it was, it was surreal.
[interviewer] So what did that feel like?
Well relief I suppose, a relief, because a lot of people would think,
oh Frank, bloody Frank hasn't got a clue what he was doing but I pressed on.
[Patrick] For me personally I felt, about bloody time.
[Franke Dernie] From that moment on in the season
I think we were totally dominant,
we were a second or two a lap quicker than anybody else everywhere.
[Alan] I went on and won the next three Grand Prix's,
I won the Dutch Grand Prix, the Austrian Grand Prix
and the German Grand Prix.
[commentator] And Jones has done it, and he is the world champion.
He's the world champion of 1982, Keke Rosberg.
Well he has an eye for the ladies, Frank, he's always liked a pretty girl.
[Dave Brodie] I, like Frank, had women literally throwing themselves at me
and you can't help every now and again pick one up can you?
I used to get notes put on my windscreen wiper of my car,
there were groupies going around the circuit
and they were parading up and down the pits,
unreal, we called them screwdrivers, and they did.
With any sport you get a following of glamorous women
who are just there for the action
and they will appear at the parties in the evening,
sometimes in the hospitality areas
and a lot of the sponsors employ promotions girls,
all tall and long legs and very glamorous.
[presenter] Formula 1 is a heady cocktail
of strutting temperamental egos
and a deep undercurrent of male sexual domination.
[Lyndon Swainston] When I started
there were very few women working in Formula 1,
some of the teams had a female caterer, maybe a husband and wife team,
there were press officers who were women,
women were considered to be irrelevant, they made the tea,
booked the flights or provided glamorous accompaniment
to drivers and team owners.
Although she was a perfectionist,
she knew that life is always full of compromises
and that was probably one of them and she'd fallen for Frank
but she'd fallen for Frank as a complete package.
[Claire] And because she was completely besotted and head over heels
that was it and she dealt with it. Um I wouldn't.
[interviewer] Could you imagine at that time,
a woman being Deputy Team Principal or-
No, absolutely no way,
women, men in motor racing are sexist,
they're possibly the most sexist people in any sport.
Women are always going to come under more scrutiny
because there was a huge body of people within Formula 1
who still don't believe women can do the same job as men.
[Claire] I think Formula 1 traditionally has been quite a male dominated sport
but there are so many more women now that work um in our sport,
and that's not just in the high profile positions,
so we've got female engineers, female aerodynamicists
so things are absolutely changing.
[journalist] So your father is an icon when it comes to Formula 1,
was it harder to prove your skills because you're a woman
or because he's your father?
Um Formula 1, this role, was not my ambition from a little girl,
however kind of circumstances changed and a job became available
and I was asked to do it, not by my dad, um and in fact when he was asked
he said no way is she working for my company. [Group laughs]
[journalist] So if you're, in your private life,
in which situations do you enjoy being a woman? [Group laughs]
Um...
[Claire] I get asked that female question a lot,
I was asked it last night at dinner,
I was asked it in four interviews I did yesterday,
but I still find it quite odd that people find it surprising
that a girl might be doing this job, it really kind of annoys me.
[laughs].
[Jonathan] Heritage is sort of a nice, to-itself department uh...
we, we have some support from people in the factory
but it's, it's mostly just, just me and Dicky so
yeah it's mostly just, just us here.
Just getting down here to some of the bigger components,
you can see much heavier there,
they're actually buckling the shelves in here.
Oh that box isn't numbered.
[interviewer] Does Claire ever come over here Johnny?
No I don't think she knows this room exists.
- [laughs] I don't. - [interviewer] No?
[Jonathan] No, nobody comes over here I don't think [laughs].
[Claire] Me and Johnny.
Jonathan wearing his um, Johnny used to like playing soldiers quite a lot.
- [interviewer] How are things? - [Claire] Not, not the best.
- [interviewer] Can you talk about that? - Um...
Um... Johnny is, you know it's um...
I suppose some families just have, you know, always gonna have
you know some issues aren't they and um
unfortunately Johnny and I do um, which I think is something that I will
regret and be very unhappy about my whole life um...
[interviewer] And is that, is that to do with work or...?
Yeah. Yeah it is, unfortunately.
[interviewer] Is it because you got the position that you did and...
- Yeah. - [interviewer] He didn't.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah I'm not, I'm not the oldest and I'm not a boy.
[Jonathan] Uh... that's me and Claire.
[interviewer] You two look pretty close in that one.
That was about 30 years ago flaughsL.
[Claire sighs]
It's horrible, he thinks that I was ambitious
and that um I put myself in,
in the position and you know I lobbied, I,
you know cajoled my way in and
couldn't be the situation... could not be further from the truth.
[Jamie] It's something their mother would be deeply unhappy about
and I think it's something that she could've sorted
um in a way that probably nobody else could.
I don't believe Frank could, could sort it out.
[Jonathan] I can remember some time in 1984 and as young children do,
waking up earlier than their parents
and just for this man with a moustache and uh...
an accent different to ours, obviously being from Birmingham
just walking past and saying good morning
and it scaring the living life out of us,
and us both running into my parents' room
and saying there's a man in the house, there's a man in the house
and uh... them saying, “No, no, no, no it's Daddy's new driver,
"that's Nigel Mansell."
[Murray Walker] The rumours say that you might be going to Williams,
what would you have to say about that?
[Nigel Mansell] Williams? Williams? Who are they? [Laughs].
[Frank] When Nigel was on top form
he was as good as any driver we've ever had I would say,
he was hard work out of the car
but in the car he was, he was really superb.
[Frank Dernie] Nigel is three people in one,
he's an absolutely fantastic racing driver
who is just astoundingly good when it comes to overtaking people.
[commentator] And Mansell moves to the outside and Manselfs going through,
Nigel Mansell takes the lead and neatly boxes Ayrton Senna.
[Frank Dernie] As a family man, he's just the nicest guy,
he's got a lovely family, he adores his children, he's faithful to his wife,
unlike quite a few racing drivers
but as a person out of the car he's an absolute arse,
you know he's just a difficult bloke to work with.
[Nigel Mansell] Drive slower, get it together,
it's a fucking nightmare, then someone's...
[Frank Dernie] And that was why, generally speaking,
we all liked Nelson quite a lot and found Nigel a bit too much.
[BOs music]
[Frank Dernie] Nelson Piquet replaced Keke Rosberg for '86
and he was hired because Frank loved the idea of Nelson Piquet,
he had already won two world championships
and he loved Nelson's Brazilian flare, his girlfriends,
the way he looked, the way he carried himself.
[Jackie] He had the private yacht and he had a helicopter on the yacht
and he had a citation 10 jet which at that time
was by far the fastest jet in the world and he was flying it.
[Peter] Nelson was ebullient, loved life and was a very cool guy,
Nigel was cheese and chutney sandwiches
and hot milk before he went to bed.
[Nigel Mansell] Yes!
[Frank Dernie] I thought at that time Nelson was the best driver in the world,
so I was thrilled to bits he was coming, he was very keen to join Williams
because he felt that we were the quickest.
[Patrick] Nelson felt with that package around him
he could win another world championship.
[cars wailing]
[Frank Dernie] We were doing the last of the pre-season tests,
"the Paul Ricard Circuit, so we had both Nigel Manse" and Nelson Piquet there,
Frank had come out to the test because
he was very excited about the performance.
[Claire] Dad was you know away, he was at a preseason test
and it was a kind of spring afternoon and mum
suggested we go out on some bikes
and took a little picnic and found a field, like you do
and it was a really lovely day and then we just got back
and waiting for dad to come home and, but he never did.
[Patrick] The test was going very well,
I think Frank was full of the joys of spring
and thinking, right we're gonna go out and show them
we can win the world championship,
he was due to run a half marathon on the Sunday morning afterwards.
[Peter] Frank, keen to get back for the half marathon he was doing,
it was a county half marathon, he was that good.
[Patrick] And so he and Peter Windsor
who was the marketing guy at the time, they went to the airport.
[Peter] And he had his Avis Ford Sierra...
and he said “Right c'mon, let's go.”
And then a spot of get-home, have you ever heard of get-home-itis?
[interviewer] When you wanna just get home?
[Frank] You've gotta get home, must do, must catch the last flight.
[Patrick] He took a little twiddly road down through the back of the circuit
and it was a very, very twisty, narrow road.
[Peter] And he was in this 1600 Sierra, throwing the thing around,
braking as late as he could
but I do remember saying to Frank at one moment,
when the back end skipped out under braking into a tight left hander,
uh... “Are the brakes ok on this thing Frank?”
[Frank] And he said with sort of trepidation,
“Frank do you always drive like this?",
meaning, and you can't really tell your boss this, f-ing well slow down.
[Peter] I remember him saying,
“Yeah, the brakes are fine, brakes are fine.
[Frank] I was rushing and rushing and rushing.
[Peter] Suddenly we were in clear road,
the road was downhill
and there was a fast left hand kink about 300 yards ahead of us
and I remember seeing through the windscreen the,
a stone wall on the inside, it looked like we were just gonna hit the,
the end of this wall and my reaction was just to bury myself in the foot well area.
As we hit the back, that wall the car went up in the air...
...there was just silence, just a terrible silence,
then this massive thump and crash.
It was you know a real whack in my neck sharp, sharp pain, pain.
It's, rolling over doesn't hurt like this.
I remember Frank saying after about 10 seconds,
“Are you ok? Are you ok?
I can't move, I'm trapped, I'm trapped,
get me out, get the ignition off, get the ignition off',
because already there was a smell of fuel.
I'm suspended about three, four inches from the floor upside down.
[Peter] And there was a lot of blood
because he'd taken a direct blow on his head
when the roof had come down like that.
[Frank] Soon as I undid the belt, of course I fell on my bleeding head,
right on my neck again.
The only thing I could remember
was to try to stabilise his head and neck
and try to pull him out by holding him under the armpits
and then he started to say, “You know Peter, I'm a Roman Catholic
and if anything happens, I want to see if you can get the last rites.”
[Frank Dernie] We were just looking at packing up
when a French youth arrived on a moped asking for me
and he explained that Frank Williams had gone off the road
and wanted some help.
But Nelson said “Oh shit, that's a twisty road, I know the road,
"let's go down and see."
We didn't know exactly the damage but uh...
Uh... we knew it was something very dramatic.
[Nigel] We raced to the scene as quickly as we could
and at that time Frank's life was in the balance.
[ambulance siren]
[Peter] And that's when Nigel delegated himself really
to go in the ambulance with Frank,
basically hold Frank's hand and be with him.
Uh... I had a tremendous fear for Frank's safety and,
and his wellbeing and life at that time.
So certain people needed to be energised to do the right thing, quickly.
[Franke Dernie] But by then it was pretty clear
that there was a very good chance that he's broken his neck.
When I phoned Patrick Head I told him that it looks like, from the x-rays,
that Frank's spinal column's been cut
and it was pretty, I think I said to him, “I think he's' fucked”,
like you know he looked really bad.
[Patrick] The next day Ginny and I flew down to Marseille
and she was pretty shattered but she was a brave woman.
The first time that I knew that things were gonna be really serious
was when the doctor in charge of the intensive care unit
called Ginny and I into his office and said,
"“When do you wanna move Frank back to England?"
Which I immediately took to mean they think he's gonna die
and they don't want him to die in their hospital.
At that stage, when Ginny got the message
that the frogs were gonna let Frank die,
she organised a plane, flew him back to Heathrow,
an ambulance took him to the London hospital
and 20 minutes later he was hooked up to English machines
and he was in a shocking state, shocking state.
[Peter] The first thing that happened to Frank
was that he had a tracheotomy operation in the London hospital
and the operation went well in the sense that
suddenly Frank had relief and he could breathe,
he could get the fluid out of his lungs
and I remember Ginny learnt how to operate the extraction of the fluid
and would help the nurses and was able to do that
on her own within a day or two.
Her approach was I'm gonna manage these nurses around Frank's bed here
the way Frank runs a race team.
[Patrick] Ginny was literally his guardian,
he clinically died three times
and without Ginny jumping on top of him and pumping his lungs out
and resuscitating him, not the nurses and the doctors,
but Ginny herself, um he would've been dead.
[Peter] I remember I was off one day and Ginny was on duty as she called it.
The head of the unit came out and said,
“Normally Mrs Williams, in this situation,
"we would turn the life support off, but we need the family's permission."
[interviewer] Did you ever doubt whether Frank should be kept alive?
Yeah.
Yeah and um I actually said to him,
“Frank, I'm your best pal and I'd do anything for ya,
you want a bag over your head, I'll do it for you",
I promise you I said this,
I said “but you'd have to convince me first
"why your kids wouldn't want you around in any condition"
and I said, “So don't ask me to do anything
"that your kids wouldn't approve of."
So he said, “I won't do that David",
that was when he was speaking, he said “I'll never do that."
[Claire] So this is a book I wrote when I was little.
I wrote that “I thought it would be a good idea
to start a kind of scrap book all about my father.
Above all I wanted somewhere to write down all my memories of him
before my mind had the chance to forget them.
Hopefully I will never forget what he used to be like before his accident.
Everyone thinks their father is the best. I'm not an exception.
"I worship my father. It sounds silly but he's my hero."
[Franke Dernie] I started taking CDs
and things like that for him to listen to,
to fill in the time a bit,
because you have to remember he was a marathon runner,
you know he used to run 12 miles every day and felt bad if he didn't
and it was a spectacularly big change of life for Frank
when he had his accident.
[interviewer] So what, what kind of music did you introduce him to?
[Frank Dernie] Bach.
♪ Erbarme dich ♪ ♪ Johann Sebastian Bach ♪
[Dave Brodie] I mean I thought that my pal Frank was indestructible,
you know he got away with everything,
Frank'll be alright but he wasn't on this one
and Pd go and see him three or four times a week,
I always gave him a kiss, I had to,
lean over and give him a kiss on the forehead
and say "Your old mate Brode's here, mate."
and he used to flicker his eyelids at that, he couldn't speak,
stuff in his mouth, up his nose, oh it was a horrible sight.
[Frank] Oh there was a lot of discomfort
and pain in the very early days,
that's inevitable, when such a major part of your body
gets a kick in the arse but um I can't say "Oh it was terrible",
it's not in my mind, I don't remember much of it.
Body's got a great many ways of protecting itself,
when it's in a bit of pain or bother.
First thing they said, “Broken your neck, long recovery period,
how much you'll recover isn't sure“,
of course they knew I wouldn't recover uh...
but you don't quite tell a person
"when he wakes up “You're f-ed mate, for good."
[Jamie] Probably for the first time in front of me,
Virginia, she lost it, it was a sort of an awful moment
and I remember putting my arms around her and she was saying.
“Frank's gonna be, he's quadriplegic,
"he can't walk Jamie, he can't do anything."
And I was saying, “It's gonna be ok”
but I had this sort of feeling,
I wasn't sure at all that it was going to be ok.
For a long time, maybe three, four months after the accident,
there was no real certainty that he'd ever be able to leave the hospital
and to all intents and purposes he was dead to the team.
And you know there we were with the fastest car,
we were gonna win all the races,
we got two fantastic drivers and everything was going
and then all of a sudden the boss, the figure head, the main man
had had this horrific accident and it really was a massive change.
I think then it sort of dawned on us all, um, where do we go from here?
What's gonna happen in '86?
[Murray Walker] We await the start of the.
Brazilian Grand Prix and the 1986 season.
Sadly, Frank Williams, boss of the Williams team isn't here
after a major road accident in France.
But for the whole team, that's an added incentive to do well.
[Dave Brodie] Well they went to work with a vengeance,
instead of them all moping about, they said.
“You tell Frank you don't have to worry about a thing here,
we're gonna win the next races for him.“
[Murray Walker] And it's go.
A superb start for Nigel Mansell, who has already passed Nelson Piquet.
And it's Senna, Manse“, Piquet is the running order at the present moment.
Manselfs touching wheels with Ayrton Senna.
[Franke Dernie] We went to the first race and Nigel crashed on the first lap
whilst trying to overtake Senna in a very stupid manoeuvre.
[Murray Walker] Mansell appears to be out of the race
so up into second position ifs now Piquet and Moretto is up into third place.
And through into the lead goes Nelson Piquet,
Nelson Piquet leads on lap three, this one is for you Frank.
Nelson Piquet wins the 1986 Brazilian Grand Prix
and you will hear the crowd go absolutely mad.
[crowd cheering]
[Nelson] I can say it was a very special day for me,
I think it's a good present for Frank,
I think he's there lying in a bed and uh...
I think he will be happy to watch the race and uh...
Uh... we hope uh... that god help Frank also.
[Peter] It was clear we had the best car
and the only thing that was gonna come between us
and winning the championship
was lots of intra team rivalry between Nelson and Nigel.
I think that, that was used actually to motivate Frank,
we need you Frank, to manage these two guys,
because there's gonna be problems if, if we just let them race free rein
and we need to get on top of this quite quickly.
[Patrick] Nelson claimed that Frank had said
you will be number one driver,
you will always have the spare car and the team will revolve around you.
I came there to win the championship, I came there as the number one driver.
[Peter] Problem was, Nigel didn't sign as a number two driver.
So he drove as fast as he could
and quite a lot of the time that was faster than Nelson was going.
[Frank Dernie] Nigel used to drive straight at him,
because Nigel was pretty aggressive,
I mean a couple of times Nelson said to me
I had two choices, be second or die.
[Nigel] I must've been a nightmare to drive with as a number two,
being as quick as I was at times.
I mean that was horrendous. You know, they hated each other.
[Patrick] Nelson insisted that we went into the hospital and saw a,
an almost dead, croaking Frank.
Saying, “Frank you said that this and whatever
and Patrick is running the team so that we're equal number ones with Nigel.
"And that's what, not what you said to me."
And Frank was, I mean I don't think Frank could reply to him.
He was almost out of it.
[Peter] When things didn't go as well as they should've for Nelson,
in other words when Nigel was quicker,
Nelson assumed that it could only be because
Nigel Mansell had been given preferential treatment.
100% the English team wanna win the English driver,
Williams for sure wanted to make an English champion, not me.
[interviewer] Nelson thinks that there was
a bias towards Nigel because he was British.
I think that's not true, um
there could've been but Nigel was such an arse
that it was very difficult to have a natural bias to him,
I mean on one occasion, I do remember he was whinging about something,
“Oh did you see what he did to me then?", on the radio,
and Patrick said, on the radio, “For fuck's sake, stop whinging Nigel”
and switched his radio off.
[Frank] Patrick carried the business in my absence, it was very hard on him.
Paddy was left lumbered,
an enormous amount of responsibility, he wasn't ready for.
[Patrick] I was up to my eyebrows with two guys
that both were determined to be world champion that year
and were not gonna take for me saying.
"Sorry I can't make a decent job of running your car"
because I'm too worried about Frank Williams so uh...
It was a very stressful, very difficult time in the team.
[Nelson] And uh... everything went completely disaster for me,
but uh... Frank was not there
and I couldn't come to the hospital and say
“Frank, this has happened this, this has happened that, it's not fair“,
his problem was much more than my problem.
[Jamie] Frank was still in intensive care
and he remained in intensive care for quite a time and it was another,
I think it was 12 weeks um before he eventually came home
but they were the longest weeks you could imagine.
[Claire] We all were just relieved and thrilled that dad made it
and he was home and we got him home.
Yes it was a very different kind of life
but we had dad still and we were a family still
and he still had Formula 1 and that's what kept him going.
[presenter] Frank Williams is quadriplegic,
from his shoulders down
he has no control over the functions of his own body.
Less than six months after the accident
he had ruthlessly forced enough movement
into his partly functioning shoulders to push himself along,
but his arms are just pistons of flesh and bones, with no feeling.
[Michael Waldher] He's paralysed from his shoulders literally downwards,
he can lift his arms and he can, for example,
if he wants to scratch him in his face
he pushes his hands against his face um
but he can't, he can't use his fingers.
[interviewer] Why does it say hell on wheels?
[Claire] Um...
Um it's because Dad's life is hell in a wheelchair.
He's always in a lot of pain all the time,
I don't think people realise that,
how much pain Frank is in, every day of his life, every minute of every day.
[interviewer] You wouldn't know it though would you?
No you wouldn't think he has anything to complain about.
Dad never does think he has anything to complain about.
That's a lovely picture of mum and, well not so good of dad, lovely of mum.
[interviewer] And what about Ginny, how did Ginny react?
Well it was tough, tough, very tough I think. Very tough lady.
Um but she didn't fall apart, she took very good care of me.
It must've been very hard for her,
suddenly you're not a proper husband anymore
and have to spend a lot of time looking after him.
It's very difficult for anyone who hasn't lived with a quadriplegic,
to know what it's like to almost lose your husband but not quite.
Well their relationship clearly was likely to change
um in that Frank needed care at all times of the day and night
so if it was a different kind of life for, for Frank
it was gonna be an equally different kind of life for, for Virginia.
[Pamela] 'l'm not usually given to making New Year's resolutions,
but at the end of 1988 I decided that I would spend the following year
setting down everything that has happened to Frank and me
in the last two decades.
Both before and after the car accident,
which left him permanently paralysed from the neck down.
I felt it might act as an exorcism.
A way to put it all behind me and start to look forward again.'
Reading it, it was like, Jesus Christ, she went through this
and she didn't tell anyone,
you know she didn't share that burden with anybody.
[interviewer] Why do you think she shared it, then?
[Claire] She says that it was a cathartic exercise for her,
because Dad's the star isn't he?
Dad's the one in the spotlight,
Dad's the one that everyone goes Frank Williams is amazing,
Frank Williams is wonderful
and for all those years Mum had been in the background,
I don't think she did it, she didn't wanna do it
because she wanted fame or adulation,
she just did it because she wanted to, people to know the full story.
[Pamela] 'His memory of the early days after his accident is blurred and vague,
he has never asked me what it was like in France
or in the London hospital
or what it has been like for me these past few years, now he will know.'
[interviewer] Have you, have you read her book?
No, I don't want to.
[interviewer] Why do you not want to read it?
That's a peculiar emotion.
I think, I would like him to read it,
um because I think that it would be respectful to Mum
um to understand what she did go through but I just,
you know I think,
I dunno I just think it's probably too much for Dad to read it,
he doesn't feel any need to, but I wish he would.
[interviewer] Do you think you ever will read it?
Maybe, before I die, but not, not imminently that's for sure.
[Frank Dernie] That picture must be.
Frank's first Grand Prix after his accident,
big change of life for all of us.
[applause]
[Patrick] When Frank appeared in the wheelchair the crowd just went crazy.
It's great fun to be with the team,
it's great fun to be at a race track again.
[presenter] Back at the track,
Frank Williams savoured his team's success
for the first time this season,
Piquet and Mansell took first and third places in practice.
[Patrick] He did have a really sort of symbolic visit
but he was determined to be there
because he wanted the world of Formula 1
to know that he was still around and ostensibly still in control
but he played no part at all and was very much a show appearance.
[Jonathan] But my father only attended on the Friday, the practice day
and that was all he was physically up for.
[Murray Walker] The lights for red and go!
And Piquet leads, Mansell is second into clearways...
The two Williams cars in their battle for leadership,
toe-to-toe, eyeball to eyeball, almost wheel to wheel.
[Peter] Nelson and Nigel
really, really started to slug it out with one another.
Nigel wasn't afraid to be half an inch, an inch away from anybody
if he had to be, erm, and he was
and it was serious motor racing between the two Williams Honda drivers.
[Murray Walker] And there he goes,
Nigel Mansell leads the British Grand Prix
from the man who is his greatest competition.
Piquet's going for it as they go down into the right hander
at Paddock and Mansell's absolutely on the racing line,
there are no orders between these two.
[Peter] From the pit wall, that was the first time I remember
not actually enjoying the race because I was so sweaty palmed
as to what might happen between the two of them
and I think Frank was back home watching it on TV,
probably as nervous as the rest of the team was at that point.
[Murray Walker] Piquet going through on the inside
but he's gonna be blocked
"and he has been and Manse" holds the lead. Great stuff.
Nigel Mansell exits the last corner,
"crosses the line and Manse" is the winner.
Great stuff. Wonderful drive.
[crowd cheers]
Nigel has broken his back, he's broken his neck,
he is now number one in the world championship
and just listen to the crowd.
[crowd cheers and applauds]
[Peter] After the race it wasn't normal
for a team manager or team representative
to be on the podium, but on this occasion,
because Frank had been there for the test and because it was Nigel
and because it was Brands Hatch, Ginny was invited up,
to take the Constructor's Trophy on behalf of Frank.
[Murray Walker] Now behind Alain Prost,
the woman is Ginny Williams.
You'll just see her in a minute I expect.
There's Ginny Williams and, and Patrick Head,
the designer of the winning Williams car. Oh what a day.
[commentator] And there is Ginny holding up the trophy.
[Peter] To me, that photograph is one of my favourite photographs of Ginny
because she's got this expression on her face where it's just like, yes!
[Nigel] It was a tremendous moment
because of what Ginny had gone through,
because the accident just didn't happen to Frank,
it happened to everybody
but the closest person it happened to was his dear wife.
Hi Preston.
How we doing there Jimmy Jock the Noo?
[Jimmy] Alright thanks Frank.
Is Biggles under control is he? Very hard work isn't it?
[Frank speaking Italian]
And the best therapy Frank ever had
was being back at his desk with a phone that Nelson gave him actually,
which allowed him to tap numbers on, big numbers on a pad
and he had a headset on, make his own phone calls.
Mentally he said,
“So long as I'm on the phone, so long as I can talk, I'm going motor racing.”
Basil Hill Road [Speaking Italian]
[background angelic singing]
[interviewer] Mentally, how do you think the disability has affected Frank?
[Michael Waldher] I did ask, ask him a couple of times
when we, when we are alone in the car if,
if he sometimes thinks of running again and stuff like that
but he said he gave that thought up completely now,
he is completely in peace with the situation
and I think this is also what you get from him,
he's not sitting there and thinks "Oh shit I should have, I should have,
just got on with it."
[Frank] I can truthfully, and I'm not bragging,
I had a major business on my mind,
a racing team, it's like having a hard-on all your life?
[interviewer] It's like having a hard-on all your life?
Aren't you jealous of what I do?
Running a Grand Prix team, owning a Grand Prix team,
I run racing cars and world famous drivers all of the time,
it's, I think it's a great privilege.
[Claire] You know it's Jamie's birthday today dad?
Dad you need to choose which cards you want to give him.
[Frank] Is he about 28?
[Claire] He's about 32 actually, dad now, yeah.
- [Frank] That's my signature. - [Claire laughs].
[Frank] It's a bit drunkard but...
Jamie, you write that, Jamie.
So dad always gives us money for birthdays, all the time.
Am I giving some money.
[Claire] You're giving him money, I've organised it.
- [Frank] Oh. - [Claire] So dad had his way,
because he has no idea how, the value of money anymore,
because he hasn't been into a shop for about 45 years,
he would give us all 50p so we have to do it for him.
[Frank] That, Claire, that's absolutely untrue.
It is true, but you don't really know what things cost anymore do you?
Not really no.
[Claire] So how much does a newspaper cost?
Um up to 15 pence.
[Claire] 15 pence? [laughs]
[team applauds]
[fireworks explode]
[crowd applauds]
[Claire] I personally just wanted to say,
along with, I know my dad, just thank you so much for all
the work that you've done so far this year.
I know it's been a really, really long season for everybody.
I know maybe there's a little bit of disappointment
that we weren't a little bit better this year,
but I think everybody needs to really remember where we came from,
and it's only been two years since we were ninth in the championship.
[team applauds]
[Lyndon Swainston] When Williams were third
in the championship in Abu Dhabi
I went into the garage at the end of the race
and I stood at the back
until all the TV cameras had finished with Claire
and I said I think mum's in here
and she's watching over you and she's thrilled.
[Claire] I was just saying to dad,
it feels like forever since she's been gone,
I think Mum would've been a brilliant Team Principal you know,
I think she would've been probably the best Team Principal.
Formula 1 had ever seen if you'd just let her,
I think secretly she would've quite liked to have been TP.
[Jamie] Virginia was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2010,
I think she knew in her heart of hearts that
it was gonna get her and it was just a question of when.
[Frank Dernie] She was sort of taken for granted in as much as you know
she was hail, hearty and fit and well, and Frank wasn't
so it was not in anyone's mind I guess
that she was as vulnerable as she obviously was.
[Dave Brodie] I miss her, she was a lovely lady
and I don't know how Frank copes without her because
he doesn't have a lot of people to go home to talk to anymore,
it's quite sad really.
[Jamie] I think it affected him very deeply um,
more deeply possibly than he would've imagined
and I think that he probably came after her death to realise
just how much he loved her.
[Frank Dernie] She was the foundation of.
Frank's life outside motor racing,
it was the only thing you know and uh... he did say,
“I'm not bothering to go home anymore", now Ginny's gone.
He'd just sleep in his flat in the factory,
he didn't bother to go home, why bother'?
I, I kip down the corridor most nights of the week.
Um...
[interviewer] Down the corridor in the factory?
Yeah.
- [Claire] How are you? - [Frank] Good actually.
[Claire] Good.
It's lovely and warm in here for you Dad. I turned the heating up.
You haven't read the book, have you, pops?
[Frank] No, I must make the effort, so, yeah.
You should, you should make the effort, it's an amazing book.
- So you must read it. - Yeah I will, yeah ok.
[Claire] You should do, although it is quite sad, it is quite sad.
'Sometimes I dream that Frank is running through the Berkshire lanes.
Everything is alright.
Early in the morning in that split second between sleeping and waking
I sometimes forget, as one might forget what day it is,
that Frank is paralysed
then the knife blade of reality twists sharply in my stomach,
jerking me back to the present,
how must Frank feel in that same moment of semi-consciousness?
What a nightmare to wake up to, to be a prisoner within your own body,
not even to be able to get out of bed until someone else moves you.
Frank also dreams,
he says that usually in his dreams too he is running,
he has made a magical recovery
and everyone is astonished to see him return to fitness
and turns to watch as he races past them.'
'We are and always have been two quite different characters,
Frank has never wasted his time bemoaning the past,
it's one of his many strengths, the past means nothing to him,
whether it's a world championship won or lost,
or a road accident that crippled him,
it's yesterday, it's boring, today and tomorrow are what count.
I in contrast am happiest with the past,
I prefer the past to the future that frightens me now.
What happened to my dreams? I wanted us to grow old together,
I wanted to die in Frank's arms, I'm gonna start crying.
'We have both grown as a result of the experience,
but if a fairy godmother offered to wave her magic wand
and take us back to the way things were when I first married Frank,
I would not hesitate for a second, I would happily exchange the houses,
the executive jets, the smart hotel rooms, the gold Rolexes
for just one night in a scruffy bedroom anywhere in the world
with a selfish, funny, unsympathetic, unreliable, charismatic man I married.
I laugh much more than I used to, it helps to stop me crying.'
[Frank] Mm.
- [Claire] It's so sad. - [Frank] Don't start crying.
Mm.
[Claire] I haven't read it since mum died
and it's about how she will go to her grave heart broken
over what happened to you.
You should be very proud.
[background music]
[interviewer] What about going to the races?
Do you think you'll still be able to go to the Grand Prix's this year?
Why not?
[interviewer] I dunno, doctor's orders?
I'm fine.
I mean I'm paralysed but I'm, I probably, I spend,
I haven't had a day off work,
I don't think I've had a day off work in years,
I just don't get ill, never have done.
[Frank Dernie] Frank's personality hasn't changed,
what he can physically do has,
but his approach to his racing, his love of Formula 1,
his obsession with it is just the same now,
as it has been as long as I've known him.
[interviewer] So how does a man like that retire?
[Franke Dernie] He's not going to retire,
he's going to die on the job.
[Michael] Well Frank will never stop. [laughs]
Yeah he will stop when he closes his eyes.
[car revs]
[interviewer] Do you think you'll see Williams on top again,
in your lifetime?
[Frank makes noises]
Yes, certainly possible.