Williams Grand Prix Engineering Limited, competing in 2026 as Atlassian Williams F1 Team, is a British Formula One team and constructor. It was founded by Frank Williams and Patrick Head. The team was formed in after Frank Williams's earlier unsuccessful F1 operation, Frank Williams Racing Cars (which later became Wolf–Williams Racing in 1976). The team is based in Grove, Oxfordshire, on a site.
The team's first race was the 1977 Spanish Grand Prix, where the new team ran a March chassis for Patrick Nève. Williams started manufacturing its own cars the following year, and Clay Regazzoni won Williams's first race at the 1979 British Grand Prix. At the 1997 British Grand Prix, Jacques Villeneuve scored the team's 100th race victory, making Williams one of only five teams in Formula One, alongside Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, and Red Bull Racing to win 100 races. Williams won nine Constructors' Championships between and . This was a record until Ferrari won its tenth championship in .
Notable drivers for Williams include: Alan Jones, Clay Regazzoni, Carlos Reutemann, Keke Rosberg, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Riccardo Patrese, Thierry Boutsen, Damon Hill, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, David Coulthard, Jacques Villeneuve, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Ralf Schumacher, Jenson Button, Juan Pablo Montoya, Nico Rosberg, Pastor Maldonado, Valtteri Bottas, George Russell, Carlos Sainz Jr., Alex Albon and Felipe Massa.
Of these drivers, Jones, Keke Rosberg, Mansell, Hill, Piquet, Prost, and Villeneuve won the Drivers' title with the team. Of those who have won the championship with Williams, only Jones, Keke Rosberg and Villeneuve defended their title while still with the team; as Piquet moved to Lotus after winning the championship; Mansell left F1 to compete in the CART series after winning the championship, Prost retired after winning the championship, and Hill moved to Arrows after winning the championship. None of Williams's Drivers' Champions went on to win another championship after their success with Williams (although Mansell won the CART championship in his first season there).
Williams have worked with many engine manufacturers, most successfully with Renault, winning five of their nine Constructors' titles with the company. Along with Ferrari, McLaren, and Renault (formerly Benetton), Williams is one of a group of "Big Four" teams that won every Constructors' Championship between 1979 and 2008 and every Drivers' Championship from 1984 to 2008. Williams also has business interests beyond Formula One. They have established Williams Advanced Engineering and Williams Hybrid Power, who take technology originally developed for Formula One and adapt it for commercial applications. In April 2014, Williams Hybrid Power was sold to GKN. In August 2020, Williams was acquired by Dorilton Capital, and Frank and his daughter Claire Williams stepped down from the team's management.
Origins
Frank Williams founded Williams in 1977 after his previous team, Frank Williams Racing Cars, failed to achieve the success he desired. Despite the promise of a new owner, Canadian millionaire Walter Wolf, and the team's rebranding as Wolf–Williams Racing in , the cars still were not competitive. Eventually, Williams left the rechristened Walter Wolf Racing and moved to Didcot, Oxfordshire to rebuild his team as Williams Grand Prix Engineering. Frank recruited Patrick Head to work for the team, creating the Williams–Head partnership.
Racing history – Formula One Ford-Cosworth engines (1977–1983)
1977 season Williams entered a March 761 for the season. Lone driver Patrick Nève competed in 11 races that year, starting with the . The new team failed to score a point, achieving a best finish of 7th at the .Williams Grand Prix Engineering – 1977 results www.f1db.com. Retrieved 22 August 2006.
1978 season
For the season, Patrick Head designed the first Williams car: the FW06. Williams signed Alan Jones, who had won the the previous season for a devastated Shadow team following the death of their lead driver, Tom Pryce. Jones's first race for the team was the where he qualified in 14th position but retired after 36 laps due to a fuel system failure. The team scored its first championship points two races later at the when Jones finished in fourth. Williams earnt their first podium at the , where Jones came second, 20 seconds behind the Ferrari of Carlos Reutemann. Williams finished the season in ninth place in the Constructors' Championship, with a respectable 11 points, while Alan Jones finished 11th in the Drivers' Championship. Towards the end of 1978, Frank Williams recruited Frank Dernie to join Patrick Head in the design office.
1979 season Head designed the FW07 chassis and gearbox for the season with Frank Dernie picking up the suspension, aerodynamic development and skirt design. This was the team's first ground effect car, a technology that was first introduced by Colin Chapman and Team Lotus. Williams also obtained membership of the Formula One Constructors' Association (FOCA) which expressed a preference for teams to run two cars, so Jones was joined at the team by Clay Regazzoni. It was not until the seventh round of the championship, the , that they finished in the points. Regazzoni came close to taking the team's first win but finished second, less than a second behind race winner Jody Scheckter. The next race, the French Grand Prix, is remembered for the final lap battle between René Arnoux and Gilles Villeneuve, but also saw both cars finish in the points for the first time; as Jones was fourth with Regazzoni in sixth. The team's first win came at the (their home Grand Prix) when Regazzoni finished 25 seconds ahead of second place.
Greater success followed when Williams got a 1-2 finish at the next round in Germany, Jones in first with Regazzoni two seconds behind in second. Jones then made it three wins in a row at the Austrian Grand Prix, finishing half a minute ahead of Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari. Three wins in a row became four two weeks later at the Dutch Grand Prix, with Alan Jones winning yet again by a comfortable margin over Jody Scheckter's Ferrari. Scheckter ended Williams's winning streak when he won the ; with Regazzoni finishing third behind Scheckter and Villeneuve. Alan Jones managed another win at the penultimate race in Canada to cap off a great season.
Williams had greatly improved their Constructors' Championship position, finishing seven places higher than the previous year and scoring 59 more points. Alan Jones was the closest driver to the Ferrari duo of Villeneuve and 1979 champion Jody Scheckter. Jones scored 43 points, 17 points behind Scheckter, while Regazzoni was two places behind him with 32 points.
1980 season Before the start of the 1980 season, Regazzoni left the team and was replaced by Carlos Reutemann. Williams started strong in the championship, with Jones winning the first race of the season in Argentina. Jones won four more races: the French Grand Prix, the British Grand Prix, the Canadian Grand Prix and, the last race of the season, the United States Grand Prix. Jones became the first of seven Williams drivers to win the Drivers' Championship, 17 points ahead of Nelson Piquet's Brabham. Williams also won its first Constructors' Championship, scoring 120 points, almost twice as many as second-placed Ligier.
1981 season Williams won four races in . Alan Jones won the first race of the season, the United States West Grand Prix, and the final race of the season, the Caesars Palace Grand Prix. Meanwhile, Carlos Reutemann won the Brazilian Grand Prix and the Belgian Grand Prix. Williams won the Constructors' title for the second year in a row, scoring 95 points, 34 points more than second-placed Brabham.
1982 season
This season, Alan Jones retired from Formula One (though he would come back a year later for a single race with the Arrows team). The Australian was replaced by Keke Rosberg, who had left Fittipaldi where he failed to score a point the previous season. He won the Drivers' title that year despite winning only one race, the . Rosberg's teammate, Reutemann, finished in 15th place having quit Formula One after just two races of the new season. His seat was filled by Mario Andretti for the United States Grand Prix West; before Derek Daly took over for the rest of the year. Williams finished fourth in the Constructors' Championship that year, 16 points behind first-place Ferrari.
Honda engines (1983–1987)
1983 season Frank Williams looked towards Honda, who was developing a turbocharged V6 engine with Spirit. A deal between Honda and Williams was settled early in 1983, with the team set to begin using the engines in 1984. Keke Rosberg won at , marking Williams' last victory with Ford. The team debuted its Honda engine at the series finale in South Africa, with Rosberg running fifth.
Rosberg was unable to defend his championship, which was won by Nelson Piquet for Brabham, and finished in fifth with 29 points. Williams signed Jacques Lafitte, who had previously raced for Frank Williams' original team, away from Ligier to replace Derek Daly. Laffite finished eleventh in the points with a best finish of fourth, achieved twice at Brazil and Long Beach. Because they did not contest the entire season with one manufacturer, Williams made two entries in the constructor's standings. The Fords garnered a total of 36 points, leaving the team a distant fourth behind champion Ferrari, Renault, and Brabham; the two points Rosberg earned in the Honda at South Africa was enough to place it eleventh in the constructor's standings, just ahead of Theodore and Lotus, which each garnered one point.
1984 season For the season, the team ran an FW09. Keke Rosberg won the Dallas Grand Prix and finished in second at the opening race in Brazil, coming in eighth in the championship as Lafitte came in fourteenth with five total points and a best finish of fourth in Dallas. Williams again struggled in the constructor's championship, finishing with 25.5 points to place them sixth, 8.5 behind fifth place Renault. This was the last year that Williams raced with backing from Saudia Airlines.
1985 season
In , Head designed the FW10, the team's first chassis to employ the carbon-fibre composite technology pioneered by McLaren. Nigel Mansell, who was pushed out of his ride at Lotus after they were able to convince Ayrton Senna to leave Toleman after his rookie year, joined the team to partner with Rosberg after Lafitte chose to return to Ligier after two seasons with Williams. Dernie produced another competitive aerodynamic package. The team scored four wins with Rosberg winning the Detroit and Australian Grands Prix, and Mansell won the and the . Williams finished in third in the Constructors' Championship, scoring 71 points.
During qualifying for the , Rosberg completed a lap of the circuit in 1:05.591. The lap's average speed was . This was the fastest recorded lap in Formula One history to that point.
1985 was the first year of Williams' long term relationship with Canon Inc. as its backer; the relationship would continue for nine seasons.
1986 season In March 1986, Frank Williams faced the most serious challenge of his life. While returning to the airport at Nice, France, after pre-season testing, he was involved in a road accident that left him paralysed. He did not return to the pit lane for almost a year.
Williams again found itself with a new driver for one of its Hondas as former world champion Keke Rosberg left to replace the retiring Niki Lauda at McLaren alongside defending world champion Alain Prost. Nelson Piquet, who was two years removed from his world championship with Brabham, came aboard to partner with a returning Nigel Mansell.