Williams

**Williams Grand Prix Engineering**, running as **Amazon Williams** for sponsorship reasons, is a British racing team, based in Grove, Oxfordshire. Founded in 1977 following the closing of Frank Williams Racing Cars, the original project of Sir Frank Williams, the team rose in the 1980s and early to mid 1990s to become one of the most succesful and historic teams in the sport, winning its last titles in 1996 and 1997 with Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in each year. However, from 1998, the team started to take a nosedive in performance and never saw any title wins or even sometimes staying in relevancy, with brief resurgences in the 2000-2004 era and the 2014-2017 era. Since 2018, the team had sunk to the bottom of the grid, having experienced financial problems and poor decisions in the technical area, often designing poor cars. In 2021, however, old suppliers BMW decided to fund Williams, restarting their old 2000-2005 alliance and improving somewhat the competitiveness of the historic team, spending lots of year in the midfield. However, from 2027, financial problems returned and soonly the team not only sank again to the bottom of the grid, but had even lost support from BMW, was facing the threat of liquidation and in 2031 they even had a civil war between the Williams family members. In 2032, American technology mogul and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took over the team from the Williams family, injecting lots of cash and rebranding them as Amazon Williams, bringing back the team to the top of the grid and coming close to winning the title in 2035. However, in 2036, the team found itself in controversy again due to breaching age regulations and refusing to admit their mistake, leading to their disqualification from the standings.

## Origins and F1 History

After the failure of the Frank Williams Racing Cars team and its takeover from Canadian businessman Walter Wolf, Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head created Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1977 as the succesor team. Intially running a March chassis for Patrick Neve, they made their first real chassis in 1978 and proved to be competitive from the start. Just two years later, in 1980, Alan Jones won the team's first ever drivers title, and in 1982 Keke Rosberg did the same, although the circumstances were more tragic, with rivals Gilles Villeneuve dying in a horror crash at Spa and Didier Pironi enduring a non-fatal but career ending crash, injuring both of his legs badly. It took them 5 years to win another drivers title, this time with Nigel Mansell, who would also win another title in 1992, beating the likes of Ayrton Senna in the proccess. The period from 1992 to 1997 was the most succesful period of the team. In 1993, Alain Prost won his last F1 title, retiring in the proccess. In 1994, however, the team faced a very dark year, having to face their new signing Ayrton Senna's tragic death in Imola and then losing the title to Benetton's Michael Schumacher. In 1996 and 1997, they won back to back titles with Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve, which were the last titles of the team as of now.

Following Renault's departure in 1997, Williams endured a decline, having to use obscure engines from future F2 supplier Mechachrome and later Supertec. Luckily, in 2000, BMW formed an alliance with the team, with the team being consistently the second or third best of the grid behind Ferrari and McLaren. However, in 2004, the team saw more downs in performance and in the end of a dismal 2005, BMW abandoned them in order to form an alliance with rivals Sauber. The team ever since fell to the midfield with occasional flashes of speed. From 2010 to 2013, the team's fortunes were worse, with the exception of 2012 when Pastor Maldonado scored what was the team's last win in the sport during the F1 days. In 2014, the team formed an alliance with Mercedes and Martini, moving to the front of the grid once again and even challenging Mercedes and Red Bull on occasion. However, the resurgences was short-lived again, as the team was hit by financial difficulties in 2018 and sank to the back of the grid, with even scoring points being a hassle. They also lost Martini as a sponsor, signing a short-lived deal with Rokit, who left them after a poor 2019 season.

## 2020: Last year with Mercedes

With Formula Earth starting in 2020, Williams kept star driver and Mercedes loanee George Russell and signed F2 runner-up and pay driver Nicholas Latifi. Once again, the team was at the bottom of the grid, with Russell scoring the team's only point and Latifi failing to score any points, resulting in his ousting from the team just one season after signing.

## 2021-2026: Alliance with BMW and improvements

In 2021, BMW announced its return to F1 after a 12-year abscence and quickly announced that they would make Williams its works team, while also supplying former allies Sauber. Promising Norwegian Rock Hils was also signed to replace Latifi. This year saw Williams move to the midfield, with Russell even scoring a top 5 finish in Canada and score a strong 24 points. Hils scored 6 points, losing the rookie of the year award to Freyr Vigfusson. In 2022, Russel moved to Mercedes following the retirement of Lewis Hamilton, with Pierre Gasly being signed from Alpha Tauri. The loss of Russell took its toll on the team, with them scoring only 8 points compared to 30 of 2021, but managed to move up with Gasly scoring 24 points and being the best of the lower midfield drivers in 13th. Meanwhile, the consistently underperforming Hils was replaced with Christian McGonagall in 2024.

2024 was the team's most succesful year of the second BMW era, scoring 34 points, 28 from Gasly and 6 from McGonagall. McGonagall left for Haas in the end of the year, with Vigfusson moving the other way. The Icelandic was very underwhelming, scoring just 2 points compared to Gasly's 22 points. In 2026, the rise of the top teams saw Williams dropping down the order alongside other teams like Audi and Alpha Tauri, with Gasly and Vigfusson only scoring 2 points. In the end of the year, Vigfusson retired from the sport.

## 2027-2031: Financial problems and civil war

In 2027, the team had sank further down the grid, while there were rumours that there were severe financial problems. Gasly also left the team, with McGonagall returning and Rory Douglas being signed from Audi. The year was horrible, with McGonagall scoring the team's only point. The situation was going worse and it was revealed that the funds had dried up, with Williams not even being able to afford to builg a new car, thus using the same car from 2027 for the following years. Gasly returned to the team when Douglas moved to the rising Aston Martin team. The same duo was kept for 2029, with once again the team being far away from literraly everyone else. The duo left the team at the end of the year, with Russell returning for a final stint and former Alpine test driver Glen Smith being signed. Gasly did return for 2 races when Smith was injured.

In 2031, BMW finally had enough and decided to end the support for the team, thus leaving them with completely no funds. At the same time, there was a civil war between the Williams family, with then-owner Claire Williams having a fight with her brother Jamie about who should run the team. The internal battle had increased the turmoil of the historic team, with many fearing that they would go out of business. In the end, Claire was ousted from the team for good, but the team had a very uncertain, if not doomed, future.

## 2032-2035: Amazon takeover and return to the top

In 2032, American technology company Amazon bought the team for a huge fee, transforming them into the richest team of the paddock. CEO Jeff Bezos became the owner of the team, with Jackie Williams being the only member of the Williams family staying in the team. Russell was kept for a last year, with the team signing Max Verstappen for the second seat. Both cars finished in the top 10 of the standings, and scored 2 podiums, showing the new era of the team. However, both Russell and Verstappen left the team in the end of the year in favour of Aston Martin, with Christian McGonagall returning for the third time in the team and Serbian prodigy Davor Dordevic being signed as the second driver.

2033 saw Williams winning a race for the first time since 2012 with McGonagall, who also managed to finish 7th. Dordevic finished 8th and stunned everyone with his consistent style, despite his lack of experience, having been signed from Formula International then-undearchievers Harvard. The duo made a further step up in 2034, with Dordevic finishing in 5th and McGonagall in 7th. Lastly, in 2035, Dordevic made the step further and finished third, only behind the all-conquering Red Bull team, even beating drivers like Robbie Holzman and Levi Lea'ai for this place. McGonagall, however, had a poor last year with the team, only finishing 12th and putting the team down.

## 2036: Age breaching controversy and disqualification

Following the expiry of both driver's contracts which led to both Dordevic and McGonagall moving as free agents to Renault and Alpha Tauri, Williams made a very rash decision in the 2036 transfer window, signing Bosnian prospect Vedad Muharrem Hadziefendic as a draftee but also signing a 17 year old unknown Colombian named Giuseppe Rizzo. Rizzo was ineligible to drive due to his age, but due to time constraints and various errors in the team's paperwork, they decided to race him anyways. FIA took notice and issued a penalty for the team, but Bezos refused to co-operate with FIA, going as far as blocking FIA investigators from entering the team's headquarters and even trying to destroy the flawed paperwork documents.

This angered FIA owner Alejandro Agag, who decided to disqualify the team from the standings and also disqualify Rizzo from the driver standings for breaching age rules. Even without the disqualification, the team was still last, with Hadziefendic scoring 6 points and Rizzo failing to do so. Also, the team was banned from voting at FIA meetings until 2040 and there are even rumours about the team enduring an even bigger punishment such as expulsion in the future.

## 2037-present: Decline and resurgence

The effects of the fine and, most significantly, their status as paddock pariahs, led to the team's decline in performance. 2037 saw Christian McGonagall returning for a fourth stint in the team. Hadziefendic showed improvements in his second season with 69 points, while the ageing McGonagall struggled for consistency and was often in the back of the grid. 2038 was an even worse year with the team struggling in general, but especially McGonagall, who scored just a point through the season. Hadziefendic got an injury at Monza when his car burst into flames, and the team signed Charles Leclerc to fill in for 2 races in a surprising move, making Leclerc the first driver tor race for Ferrari, McLaren and Williams. However, Leclerc, who was 41 years old, failed to score points and announced his full retirement from the sport. McGonagall also announced his retirement from the sport in the end of the year. Hadziefendic renewed for 3 more years and Suresh Bhandari was signed to replace McGonagall, but 2039 was another poor year, with both drivers in the back of the grid.

Bhandari was ousted from the team in the end of the year and Williams signed Erich von Ribermarch from McLaren. 2040 was a much-needed improvement for the historic team, with Williams returning to the top spots of the grid, with von Ribermarch and Hadziefendic scoring both 4 podiums and each and helping with their consistency beat Ferrari for second place in the standings and being the only team that would somewhat reach the unbeatable NIG Zandvoort team.

## Notable Drivers

* George Russell (2020-2021, 2030-2032)
* Nicholas Latifi (2020)
* Rock Hils (2021-2023)
* Pierre Gasly (2022-2026, 2028-2030)
* Christian McGonagall (2024, 2027-2029, 2033-2035, 2037-2038)
* Freyr Vigfusson (2025-2026)
* Rory Douglas (2027)
* Glen Smith (2030-2031)
* Max Verstappen (2032)
* Davor Dordevic (2033-2035)
* Vedad Muharrem Hadziefendic (2036-present)
* Giuseppe Rizzo (2036)
* Charles Leclerc (2038)
* Suresh Bhandari (2039)
* Erich von Ribermarch (2040-present)