Six Things You Might Not Know About Williams Racing

Williams Racing is one of Formula 1’s most legendary teams, with a history that dates back to the 1970s.

From unforgettable title wins to battling through tough times, we’ve firmly earned our place in the sport's history books.

However, there are plenty of fun and fascinating tidbits about Williams Racing that even die-hard fans might not know. Let’s dive into some of the lesser-known facts about our…

Williams stood on the top step of two different podiums in May 2012, taking gold at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show just days after Pastor Maldonado’s win at the Spanish GP. “The Williams F1 Story" was a full-scale topiary F1 car and pit crew, entered to celebrate our 35th anniversary. The winning exhibit took three years to cultivate and featured actual car parts as well as Bruno Senna's race helmet.

Yes, four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel’s first-ever F1 drive came in a Williams, specifically the FW27. On 27th September 2005, Seb took part in a test at Jerez, his maiden time behind the wheel of Formula 1 machinery. Roll the clock forward two decades and he now owns one of the most legendary Williams cars, an FW14B, and took it for a spin around Silverstone in 2022 (pictured in header).

Fans of F1 lore will appreciate that Nigel Mansell, the 1992 F1 World Champion, made the number "Red 5" iconic during his time at Williams. However, the concept of running a red number five was first birthed in 1985. With Williams assigned numbers ‘5’ and ‘6’, the two digits were hard to differentiate from a distance, especially at speed. The solution was to paint the nose cone ‘5’ bright red and keep the ‘6’ in white.

In December 1996, to celebrate the FW18 taking both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships, Damon Hill was invited to drive our machine up and down Main Street at Disneyland Paris. With cold temperatures and tram tracks to deal with, the World Champion didn’t have it easy, but kept control before being greeted by Mickey Mouse in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. Now that is a sentence you never expected to read today.

Williams Racing once had an unexpected brush with Hollywood. In 1997, our FW19 appeared in the movie Tomorrow Never Dies, starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. The car wasn’t involved in a high-speed chase or equipped with missile launchers, and you’ll do very well to even spot it, appearing for a few seconds on a TV screen alongside other news clips in the background. Maybe we’ll go for the starring role next time… Alex Albon as the next 007, anyone?

When Sir Frank Williams purchased an empty industrial unit in Didcot, Oxfordshire, in 1977, little did they know what was to follow. Williams left Didcot for Grove in the late nineties, but the legacy in the town lives on through a road named ‘Sir Frank Williams Avenue’. When it was unveiled in 2012, Sir Frank described the honour as "very touching" but admitted he was "mildly embarrassed"!