Highlights
Series
Explore
This article first appeared in GP Racing magazine.
"We are what you might call a traditionalist racing team which believes that we are out there competing for two world championships, one for the best driver in the world and one for the constructor who builds the best car in the world. As far as I'm concerned it is absolutely in the regulations, in black and white, that every team must make its own chassis."
These are the words of Sir Frank Williams - in 2007. Thirteen years ago, Formula 1 was in the grip of an identity crisis thanks to the audacity of a carbonated drinks company fielding four broadly identical cars, and Williams was prepared to go to court to preserve the status quo.
Since then an argument has been simmering - sometimes gently, often threatening to boil over - about a philosophical question that cuts to the very essence of what it means to be a competitor in Formula 1.
