Sir Francis Owen Garbatt Williams CBE, a Geordie and former travelling groceries salesman, founded Frank Williams Racing Cars in 1966 and 3 years later was taking podium places in F1.

With perennial sidekick and cockney rhyming slang Patrick Head, he created Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1977, taking their first win 2 years later at Silverstone.

Sir Frank is well known for being a wheelchair user following a car accident in 1986 from which his passenger, Peter Windsor, escaped unharmed, the less said about which the better.

He is a role model for tetraplegics and other people with disabilities everywhere as a result of his determination to continue his career unabated, and indeed go from strength to strength, right up until he made the mistake of sacking Damon Hill at the end of his championship winning season with the team, after which things went into a bit of a decline, generally accepted to have reached its nadir with Jacques Bloody Villeneuve and then Ralf Schumacher on board.

A phenomenally successful F1 team which won nine constructors' titles in 20 years (it took Ferrari 50 years to do the same) but which usually dispenses with the services of the drivers who win the title for them: Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Damon Hill all took championships and then left the team at the end of the year, for one reason or another.

The team hit a purple patch in the 1990s, when a combination of Adrian Newey's ground-breaking designs, some jolly clever electronics and a handful of half-decent drivers resulted in repeated title wins. The 1992 and 1993 Williams are probably the most technologically advanced Formula One cars to date and you could almost say that they drove themselves, without wishing to devalue the titles that Mansell and Prost won with them, of course.

This period also produced the iconic blue and white Rothmans livery, which looked great but which was probably responsible for shifting truckloads of their cigarettes. The team did attempt to make amends later, however, by running cars plastered with stickers for Niquitin and thereby promoting something to help you give up what they'd been urging you to become addicted to a few years previously.

For the 2004 season, the Williams challenger sported a highly unusual "walrus nose", which did nothing for the car's performance but which did at least mean that Ralf Schumacher was no longer the ugliest thing in the paddock. The innovative nose proved uncompetitive and was replaced by something more conventional in the second half of the year. Ralf also proved uncompetitive and was replaced by someone more talented at the end of the year.