Sure I understood the sarcasm. The problem for Williams in the long run is that there are not many drivers, let alone competent ones, who can foot such a bill. Even B. Senna brought some good money. Agreed on Rubens.
I think there is enough of a base of know-how in the Williams team to be attractive to a potential billionaire playboy to come in with a cash infusion. F-1 is still a highly profitable business, and an existing team has some intrinsic value.
The only bundle he would of gotten was from BMW that ship has long gone Sir Frank owns majority stock in the publicly traded WILLIAMS once PDVSA money dries up so will the profits along with the value.
Now that you no longer need to buy an existing team to join the F1 club Williams' value is in physical plant and more importantly talent (as measured in results). Thank goodness Frank has already made his bundle.
Some of his previous drivers would I'm sure disagree. I think calling Sir Frank a ruthless bastard that treated his drivers with contempt would be accurate ... Damon Hill and Mansell were discarded at their prime for no apparent reason. Does make me wonder how he treates the rest of his team ... Pete
What do you mean 'for no apparent reason' Mansells services were no longer needed when Senna offered his for free. Same goes for Hill: Williams prefered the services of Heinz Harald Frentzen and rightfully so. Sir Frank obviously felt the successess of Hill and Mansell were mostly down to the car, and of course he was right. Simple business, not to be mistaken for contempt and certainly not a reason to call him a ruthless bastard. Show some class.
Considering his lack of success since then, I would say that he was very wrong. Hill was a very, very good car developer, and I remember the press at the time ... destroyed both of those drivers careers, not cool. Pete
Of course, Frank Williams and Patrick Head are ruthless bastards like everybody else in the Circus, and one could argue that changing a winning team just to not pay a fistfull of dollars more to the drivers is being cheap (I remember that in 1995 Willaims had a pair of DNF because they were using cheap bearings so maybe he´s cheap for everything not just drivers). But putting the blame of their downfall in the ousting of Damon Hill is stretching the things quite a lot!! In the first place, only Damon Hill can be blamed for the destruction of his career: he could have stayed at Williams if he wanted to but wanted the money instead, so it´s not Sir Frank fault that Hill´s merits as a world champion were so debateable that nobody but a desperate Tom Walkinshaw was willing to pay what he wanted. Then, remember that Williams won again in 1997 without Hill. Their downfall started in 1998, but that´s more related to the lack of Renault money, crappy Goodyear tyres and some bad choices re: car design (i.e: tranversal versus longitudinal gearbox, in a year that the cars were narrower and needed more flow in the diffuser).
Never said that. I was using Hill as an example of what I considered poor decision making. Dropping those drivers at their peek will hardly keep sponsors running to Williams ... Pete
I know what you meant, but it´s debateable that not wanting to pay Damon Hill the second biggest salary in Formula 1 is a bad decision. The same could be said about replacing Nigel Mansell with Alain Prost. As I said, changing a winning team maybe is not a good idea, but it´s not terribly silly if you´re replacing some weak elements with others that are arguably better..
This is a good point. It's also known that Hill had an offer from McLaren for 1998 but much of his pay would be based on performance clauses and he turned it down. So he could have been in the best car for the 98/99/2000 seasons but went after the $$$$$$$$$$
Another way of looking at the situation is that we all know Frank does not care about WDC's he only wants drivers who can be consistant enough too help him win the WCC.
Didn´t know this fact. This proves that a) Damon Hill was quite greedy and/or b) that even Damon Hill couldn´t trust his own performance.
Or C) he knew better than to trust to luck. How many top rate drivers have had second rate seasons due to no fault of their own? F1 is a business and all involved operate in accordance.
Quite a few over the years, fer sure. However, once a WDC, always a WDC; Jump into a "mediocre" car and it'll generally be blamed over the jockey if it doesn't work out. Further, the list of "second rate" drivers who were/are around for a long time is also long...... +1 IIRC, wasn't Damon demanding to be one of, if not the highest paid at the time? Knowing what we know about his WDC winning car I could probably have won in the thing..... I'm with Frank on not wanting to give him top money. Mansell was simply not liked by many. Many "sighs of relief" when he left. Cheers, Ian
Sentiment is expensive. Hindsight is twenty twenty. Nothing ventured nothing gained. I could go on all day
And often do. Cheers, Ian PS, talking of "quote worthy", anyone seen anything from Is recently? I'm almost getting concerned about her!.....
If Claire Williams has got what it takes to run the team than why not. Or she may just run it to the ground.
I don't think that was the case at all (Hill asking for more money). Frank Williams had made up his mind to drop Damon Hill quite early in the season, and couldn't change his mind once he had signed HH Frentzen. Jacques Villeneuve was still on the books. Damon Hill never indicated he wanted to leave at all. The drive at Arrows was a stop gap until he could find a better car. Frank Williams has just the habit of falling out with his drivers, mostly after they win a championship. The case of Nigel Mansell is the same. Williams prefered to lose a WORLD CHAMPION rather than accept his demands about accommodations (Mansell asked for extra rooms for his family at GP venues). None of them wanted to back down, on a trivial argument, and Mansell left. Not many former Williams drivers have a good word to say about Sir Frank.
