Take a walk around the beautiful countryside village of Grove right on the edge of Oxfordshire this summer and you’ll find a high street with a smattering of shops, two primary schools, three pubs, and both a rugby and a football team.
What you wouldn’t expect to find is a great big whopping state of the art manufacturing complex just outside the village, housing several hundred staff who all work for a company called Williams Grand Prix Engineering. That’s right, it’s the frikkin’ Williams Formula One racing team – near Wantage!
There are several F1 teams in Oxfordshire, such as Renault in Enstone and Haas’s European base at Banbury, whilst elsewhere in the Thames Valley we have Red Bull in Milton Keynes, Mercedes in Brackley and Force India at Silverstone.
But Williams is special and here’s why: it was originally founded by Frank Williams in Didcot in 1977 and can trace its roots back to 1967. It has manufactured its own cars since 1978 and is one of only three teams to win over 100 races – with drivers such as Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jensen Button, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.
To date they’ve started 710 races, amassed 114 victories, won nine constructor’s championships and seven driver’s championships.
But it doesn’t end there. Williams has business interests beyond F1 and established both Williams Advanced Engineering and Williams Hybrid Power – which take technology originally developed for Formula One and adapt it for commercial applications. Such was the success of Williams Hybrid Power that in April 2014 it was sold to automotive and aerospace manufacturing giant GKN.
So there we have it, Williams F1 racing team, bona fide Oxfordshire and Formula One legends. We salute you!
