Chequered Past

16th April 1942: The Man Who Refused to Stop


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Sir Frank Williams founded his first Formula One team funded by a grocery van and sheer will. He conducted team business from a phone box when he couldn't pay the bills. He lost his close friend on a racetrack in 1970, and kept going. He lost his first team to a wealthy investor in 1976, and started again — in an empty carpet warehouse in Didcot — with an engineer he'd convinced to back him on nothing more than belief.

What followed was one of the most remarkable stories in motorsport history. Nine Constructors' Championships. Seven Drivers' titles. Nigel Mansell. Alain Prost. Damon Hill. Ayrton Senna. One hundred and fourteen race victories.

And then, in March 1986, a hire car left a road in the south of France. Frank Williams never walked again.

He was back running his team nine months later.

This episode tells the full story — from South Shields to Silverstone, from the phone box to the podium, and through the tragedies that should have broken him but never did. We also tell the story of the woman beside him throughout: Ginny Williams, whose own role in building one of F1's greatest teams has never quite received the credit it deserves.

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Music by #Mubert Music Rendering

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Chequered PastBy Martin Elliot