Williams: Speculating for future success
Williams is about to become the first Formula 1 team to float on the stock exchange, but why is it doing it? Jonathan Noble investigates what one of the sport's greatest names stands to gain by selling shares in itself, and how it plans to return to the glory days of the past
It has been a good topic for dinner debate over the years - what was the key mistake Williams made that turned it from a championship dominating force in the mid-1990s to a team that is currently going through its longest ever victory drought?
One strong theory is that it should have bent over backwards to give a shareholding in the outfit to design genius Adrian Newey when he was onboard and helping pen the mighty machines that made the outfit a regular McLaren and Ferrari beater.
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Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.
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