F1 folk: The PR legend who lived through Williams' triumph and tragedy

Frank loved running. When we'd finished a day's work, he'd come out of the motorhome - shorts, T-shirt - and he'd be off. There was a guy, who worked for our title sponsor Canon, called David Warren. He used to be an athlete. He represented the UK at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, which all the good guys boycotted. But he went and made it to the final. So he wasn't a bad runner! And I remember we were testing at Imola and we agreed with David to have dinner together, but he said he'd go for a run with Frank first. I said, "OK, I'll come and pick you up".

So I was driving my hire car and I saw these two people running along the side of the road ahead of me. One in front, shoulders square, head up, setting the pace. And the second, red-faced, slightly bent over, trying not to fall behind. The one in front was Frank.

He was a brilliant runner. If Frank did something, he did it 100 per cent. So he'd be out running every night. Shorts, T-shirt, off he went. But when the injury happened, he never looked back and felt sorry for himself. He never let it deter him.

I remember one of his interviews less than a year after the accident: Frank was in a wheelchair and you could see that the journalist felt sorry for him - and Frank just said: "You know what, I'd rather be in this wheelchair than six feet under. I can still do what I want to do." A little thing like being in a wheelchair wasn't going to get in the way.

He never felt pity for himself or anybody else. And he loved his team. He'd dedicate all his time to it. And he hated us having holidays and days off. That team was his life, to the exclusion of everything else.

Photo by: Andre Vor / Sutton Images

Bradshaw, pictured with Williams commercial director Sheridan Thynne and Nigel Mansell, has seen F1 evolve over several decades

I used to be a journalist. I am fairly certain that I was the very first female journalist at Autosport, writing mainly about rallies. Quentin Spurring was editor at the time and we used to laugh about how he'd say 'yes' to everything I asked for. The guys would say, "He'd never say yes to us," and he'd reply, "I'm just frightened she'd burst into tears if I said no" - which was a joke, of course. I loved working with him.

From there I went on to be head of press and PR for the RAC Motorsport Association, the governing body for the sport in the UK. I did the British Grand Prix as press officer, I did the kart Grand Prix, we did a rallycross Grand Prix, we did the London to Brighton veteran car run, the RAC Rally and things like that. And then in '85 I was approached by an agency called CSS, which used to do PR for JPS and Marlboro in F1. They said, 'We've got this deal with Williams to look after their sponsors, we've got Canon on board and we need a press officer. Would you like to come and do that?' And I said, 'Why not?'

Press officers didn't really exist in those days. It was a very new role. There were just a couple of us in the paddock, both working for CSS. Tony Jardine did JPS and I did Canon. Most teams didn't have press officers. Bernie Ecclestone didn't even know we existed. "What do you want a press officer for?" he'd ask. We didn't even have passes at the beginning.

If something appeared in a magazine in Brazil, nobody in Europe would see it. No one would write about who said what and reproduce the same quote hundreds of times

It was a different world. There were no enormous motorhomes like the teams have now, just very small ones, and no hospitality beyond a sandwich. I'd work in the back of the truck, where the drivers changed, where the engineers did their debriefs and everything. I was standing next to the guy who was mending the gearboxes, with my portable typewriter and a photocopier.

There was no media schedule. We just did it on the hoof. Journalists could wait hours for an interview. But they were happy to do it. Because no one would tell them, "You've got 10 minutes," as they do now - they could talk for pretty much as long as they wanted. And the drivers opened up. They weren't afraid that if they said something it was going to be misconstrued or twisted or anything like that. There was no breaking news, there were no websites, no social media.

The closest thing to social media was BBC Ceefax. It was sort of a website that you could look at on your TV - there'd be about 20 pages: Formula 1, golf, football, whatever. You'd get a 50-word story and that was it. The rest was in print. We used to say, whatever the story is today, tomorrow it will be a fish and chips wrap.

If something appeared in a magazine in Brazil, nobody in Europe would see it. No one would write about who said what and reproduce the same quote hundreds of times. Whereas today, as soon as there's something slightly controversial, the moment the journalist puts his story on the internet, instantly, it's like wildfire.

In '85 we had Keke Rosberg and Nigel Mansell. And I had known Keke since he was in Formula Super Vee. A friend of mine, a guy called John Thornburn, who worked with McKechnie Racing in Formula 5000, told me about these two drivers, Nigel and Keke, long before they came to F1. "You've got to watch these guys, Ann, they're brilliant." And they were.

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Formula 1 in the early-to-mid 1980s when Bradshaw entered the paddock was a very different environment to today

Keke was a real Finn. Whatever the weather, whatever was going on, he'd get out of the car, put on his big jacket and stick a fag in his mouth. The car wasn't very reliable that year, because it was just the beginning for Honda, so it kept blowing up. But Keke was always cool. I love him, he is just the same person when our paths cross, but sadly that doesn't happen too often now.

And Nigel... Nigel wasn't easy. Because nothing was ever easy for Nigel. He didn't have any money, his wife had done everything for him to go motor racing. They'd sold their house, they'd sold everything, just so he could keep going. So he always had to fight for it and he just felt like the world was against him. Which of course was wrong. But that was Nigel.

If somebody wrote something, he'd get really upset. Ask Maurice Hamilton, he’ll tell you about being dragged into the motorhome and being told off. I remember in Monaco Nigel complained to him about what he'd written half an hour before the race. Can you believe that? He was there, 30 minutes before the race was due to start in Monaco, complaining to a journalist!

I remember he got very upset when people wrote that his house on the Isle of Man was 'like a prison'. He built the place and there was this sort of wall or mound, supposedly to keep the wind out. But everybody said it was to keep out prying eyes and that it looked like a prison. That particularly hurt him. But even the smallest thing, the slightest bit of criticism would upset him. And of course guys like Nelson Piquet used it...

In '86 Tony Jardine left the company, so they asked me to look after JPS for a year, and I spent it working with Ayrton Senna and Johnny Dumfries. But at the end of the year JPS left and Frank said 'Can we please have Ann back?' So I went back to Williams, which I was very happy to do.

But having Nigel and Nelson together... it was like dealing with children. Schoolchildren, really. It was two sides of the garage and Nelson loved to stir things up just to annoy Nigel. When Nigel had his accident at Suzuka and hurt his back, Nelson won the title and told the media it was "a win of intelligence over stupidity". He enjoyed being like that. He'd go and say things like 'Nigel's got the ugliest wife' or 'Ayrton's gay' and that sort of thing. Again, those weren't the days of social media.

The drivers are more aware now, it's a different world they live in, and they're also aware that they have sponsors and it wouldn't go down well if they were to be misogynistic or racist or anything like that. And that's a good thing. Obviously every now and then we see things like the story with Nikita Mazepin and the girl in the car - and it's a good lesson for all the drivers. You can't do things like that.

But with Nelson... we'd be in Monaco and there'd be three or four women with him. And then they'd be fighting because one had a better apartment than the other, and he'd be hiding in his motorhome and asking me to tell them he wasn't there. And I'd go and say, 'I don't know where he is' - but of course they knew. Today we'd be horrified!

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Bradshaw found Piquet and Mansell could be a handful to manage

I wouldn't waste time going to Frank and saying 'Oh, Nelson did this' or 'Nigel did that'. Frank loved his drivers. I know it doesn't look like it with the way he sacked them. But he loved his drivers. He didn't care. All he cared about was that they drove his cars. The media side of it was up to me.

I wasn't with the team when he got injured, so by the time I got back he was already in a wheelchair. But he was still the same. The biggest change was that before he could come to people and talk to them, and after he'd need people to come to him. He used to call me in and I'd have to read out all the press releases. And then at the end of every day he wanted to know what the gossip was.

"Ann, I haven't seen Nigel Roebuck and Alan Henry, go and fetch them". And I would go and get them. And they loved it - Roebuck, Henry, David Tremayne, Joe Saward - they'd be all around him, talking to him for hours. And he'd be as happy as he'd ever been because they'd tell him what was going on.

Every now and then [Patrick Head] would think of something and look at me, 'Ah, I think I'm going to get in trouble with Ann if I say this. I've been told not to say things like that', but he'd go on and say it anyway

Then we had that season with Judd, which you could say was bad. But if you look back now, we had podiums with that car with Nigel. But that was Nigel! He was an eleven-tenths driver. He may have sometimes been difficult to deal with, but he was an amazing driver. That wet race at Silverstone, where he finished second... it was just unbelievable. And he was a fan favourite. They loved him and he loved them back!

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And then Renault came along and it was great. The French used to laugh at us because we used to give them cheese and pickle sandwiches - those brown pickles! - for lunch. It was two such contrasting cultures… Breakfast. All the Brits sitting there eating their eggs and bacon. The French, a croissant and a coffee. Lunch. Cheese and pickle sandwiches for the Brits - a four-course meal, and a glass of red wine for the French. But it worked.

Frank and Patrick Head and Bernard Dudot got on so well because they were like-minded people. The only time the team got upset was when they gave the engines to Benetton. When the deal happened, Patrick made his displeasure quite clear in the media, so he was called over to Renault to be told off. "They told me I was a PR nightmare, Ann!" But that was Patrick. He used to say to me, "I probably shouldn't have said that" and I'd say, "No, Patrick, you really shouldn't have".

I remember at the beginning of every year we'd have lunch and I'd invite the Brits. They'd all come down and I'd say, "This isn't the press conference. This is just to catch up with Frank and Patrick". And they all came anyway. Imagine if you said now, "Oh, we're not going to tell you anything on the record. But come and see us." People would say "Oh no, we're too busy". But everybody would come and see Frank and Patrick. And Frank would sit there, have a chat, and then he'd say, "Well, I'll leave you with Patrick now..."

Journalists. Patrick Head. A bottle of red. Cheese. Oh my God.

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Head was willing to engage with the media, but could be too forthcoming in Bradshaw's view

I'd be sitting there and every now and then he'd think of something and look at me, 'Ah, I think I'm going to get in trouble with Ann if I say this. I've been told not to say things like that', but he'd go on and say it anyway. And the boys would just laugh. And nobody wrote anything because it was a real relationship. They just had a great understanding. And yes, those years with Renault were a lot of fun. We used to invite French journalists too and we'd be invited to Paris. They always arranged a boat on the Seine and we'd have dinner there. It was just the best time.

And then success came. And Nigel finally won the title. He got what he wanted. But still, he had that persecution complex. He thought the world was against him. If his engine went, he'd think: 'Oh, they're trying to screw me!"

And, of course, we had that drama at the end of 1992. Would he stay? Would he go? Nobody knew. People said his demands were too high. There was this big story that one of Nigel's conditions for staying at Williams after winning the championship was that the team had to provide him with five hotel rooms during the race weekend. I don't know if that's true... It might have been! Anyway, the media had a lot to write about. And every weekend he'd come to the track on Thursday and meet the journalists and bait them.

And then Monza... We had warm-ups on Sundays, so I'd usually go over to the Eurosport commentary booth and sit with Allard Kalff and John Watson and watch the warm-up with them and listen to what they were saying. When I came back into the garage that Sunday, everybody was just gathered around the TV. And I said, "What's going on?" And they pointed to the TV and on the screen was Nigel sitting in the press conference room. So I ran up and there he was, announcing that he was leaving the team.

Suddenly this guy called Gary Crumpler from the team came in. He walked over and whispered something in Nigel's ear. It was obviously a message from Frank, a 'you can have what you want' message, but Nigel was having none of it. He was so stubborn sometimes. "No, it's too late!" And he went on with the press conference.

And then we had Alain Prost. What can I say? He was easy to work with. Very nice. And quick. Everyone said he was political. But we never saw any of that... Of course, we all remembered what happened at McLaren in 1989, but we were used to drivers not liking each other, weren't we?

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For me, Alain was great. Professor is just a perfect word to describe him. He got in the car, did what he had to do and left. Of course, he didn't want to have Ayrton next to him in the garage. But who would? And Ayrton knew how to fire him up. He'd go to the press and say 'I'll drive the Williams for free' and stuff like that. And of course, there was no way you'd ever put those two in the team. But Frank just wanted Senna.

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Bradshaw had worked with Senna previously at Lotus, but his Williams spell was all too brief

So it was 1994. Frank's dream had come true. Senna and Williams. They used to spend a lot of time talking. They both loved aeroplanes. They'd talk for hours, even before Ayrton came to us. And then Frank finally had him in the team. And Ayrton came to us to emulate what Nigel and Alain had done, to win another title with us.

But suddenly we had a problem with the car. It just wasn't as good as Benetton's. Ayrton got that car to pole position by sheer skill. But he wasn't comfortable in it. So we had to make some adjustments. And those first few races were a nightmare.

I have known Ayrton since 1986 when I spent a year at Lotus working with JPS. And at that time he was very determined, very motivated and very focused. You see some drivers and you think, 'No, you'll never be world champion' because they're just too relaxed. I knew a lot of guys like that, and I loved them, but you just thought, 'Oh, you've got to be a bit more selfish'. But then you see guys like Max Verstappen and you know why he's world champion.

If I was a zookeeper, I couldn't just say 'I'm not going to do it this weekend because I think those tigers are dangerous'. No, your job is to look after those tigers. We all knew that was what we were doing

With Ayrton, you knew he was going to be world champion even then. But when he won the title, I think he became a bit more relaxed. He was calm, even spiritual, he thought about things very deeply and his work ethic was excellent. But he was also kind and friendly. And he loved a good joke. It was a privilege to work with him.

He never criticised the car or the team. We were just trying to get on. I went to most of the tests, but we didn't do a lot of media because we knew we had to sort out the car first. And he'd spent a lot of time back at the factory going through things.

After Aida, the second race, where he was taken out by Mika Hakkinen on the first lap, he came straight back to the factory. I remember on the flight home I was sitting next to Brian Hart, who was a great mate of Ayrton's from the Toleman days, and he came over and sat down on the floor next to us and we spent most of the flight just talking - about the car, about the problems. And then he went straight to the factory and stayed there until Imola.

That weekend... A shit show from the word go, wasn't it? Rubens' crash on Friday. Then Roland [Ratzenberger, who was killed when his Simtek crashed approaching Tosa corner on Saturday]. JJ Lehto at the start.

People say that Ayrton wanted to give up racing, that he was very emotional that weekend. There was this chat with Prof Watkins about going fishing together and all that. But I'm not sure...

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Senna had been actively involved in reforming the GPDA following Ratzenberger's fatal accident

Yes, he was emotional. But he'd just seen a fellow driver die, he'd seen a friend have a big accident. Everybody was emotional. You know, it was one of those weekends where you just think 'let's get this over and done with' - because from the word go it was just a horror movie. And you couldn't write it.

Somebody said 'God turned his back on us for this weekend'. I don't know. If you're religious, you might think that he just went: "Well, hang on, you lot, you're not behaving yourselves. So I'm just going to give you a weekend by yourself and then I'll come back and see how you've messed up". But I just feel that sometimes these things happen.

Sometimes just everything goes wrong. Obviously the fans want to know why. There's the media. Why did Ayrton die? And we know why he died. Because luck wasn't there. And there was a little piece of metal that just went through the visor. But why was he in that position? Why did he have an accident? Was it the steering column that broke? Was it the tyre that deflated after the safety car?

It's been almost 30 years and we still don't know. And we're never going to know. What we do know is that motor racing is dangerous. And that weekend showed just how dangerous it can be. And probably showed how much work still needs to be done to make it less dangerous. But just by sheer description, what we do is dangerous.

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Frank gave me very good advice that day. We were all very emotional. Nobody said he'd died yet. But we knew how bad it was. And Frank, he was in a wheelchair, he'd been through this before, he'd lost Piers Courage... And I remember going into the motorhome and he just said to me, "Ann, if you think you're going to cry, put your sunglasses on and just get on". And we had to get on.

If I was a zookeeper, I couldn't just say 'I'm not going to do it this weekend because I think those tigers are dangerous'. No, your job is to look after those tigers. We all knew that was what we were doing. We accept that risk. And nobody accepts it more than the driver.

We all had to keep ourselves in check. We had to deal with the media, we had to deal with what was going on, but we also had mechanics standing in the garage wondering if they'd done something wrong.

We've got to get through it. We've got a race to run. We've got another driver. Damon, to his credit, got back in the car, not knowing if Ayrton's car broke or whatever, and raced. And he did an awful lot for that team that day and that year. He was a tower of strength. An absolute tower of strength.

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Bradshaw has huge admiration for the way Hill kept going in the wake of Senna's death

It was the guys who worked on the car that we had to look after. The media were in overdrive, trying to find out what had happened. And these guys were standing there thinking about the car. People were doing their job for their driver, and suddenly they were standing there wondering, 'Was it me?' And they never got that car back.

It was more about keeping the media away from them. We all flew back that night - and Damon was with us - having known that Ayrton had died. The crew on the plane got a message to me to say the airport was full of TV crews.

So when we got to Gatwick I went straight up to them and said, "Look, I will talk to you. I will do whatever you want for as long as you want. But please don't try and stop any of these guys. Please." And they were very respectful. I don't know if they would do that in this day and age, but they were very respectful then. They let them all go and then I stayed and chatted with them.

It's nice to go around the world and meet new people who are also passionate about motorsport. Because at the end of the day, that's what we all have in common

And then Damon and Frank and then DC [David Coulthard] pulled themselves together and they came back and won again. It took them a while to win another championship, Michael Schumacher and his boys didn't help, but then we came back in two years. Damon came to the team to support a great driver and then worked with another great driver and then became a champion himself.

But, of course, it was all over with Frank and his drivers. He had decided to take Heinz Harald Frentzen allegedly long before Damon won his championship that year, and Damon had nothing else to do but move to Arrows.

I also signed with Arrows, almost at the same time as Damon. I wanted to do a bit more than just F1. And I'd known Tom Walkinshaw for many years. He'd had a sportscar team, a touring car team, an engineering company, a design company, he was building bike engines for Kenny Roberts. I just felt that after a long time of doing only F1, I wanted to do more. I love motorsport, I'm not just a Formula 1 person. With Tom, I was able to do Le Mans with the R390 project, Volvo touring cars, Arrows in F1 and a lot more.

We had Pedro Diniz, Mika Salo, Pedro de la Rosa, Jos Verstappen. And in '97, of course, there was Damon, who I enjoyed working with. He wrote to me the other day and asked if he was worse to work with than Nigel. Of course, he wasn’t! But that's Damon. I guess he was joking. But you're never sure with him, because he's very vague sometimes, in his own Damon world.

I came back to Williams briefly in 2001 to cover Silvia Hoffer's maternity leave. So I was back with the team for a while when they were with BMW. We had Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya. Ralf could be difficult and I somehow expected Juan Pablo to be difficult as well, because I had heard that he and Silvia didn't get on well. And I tell you, it is impossible not to get on with Silvia.

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Bradshaw's desire to see more than the F1 paddock took her to TWR, where she also worked with Arrows drivers Diniz and Salo

I remember one of the first meetings where he said something quite rude and I replied: "Be careful, young man, I am old enough to be your mother". And he looked at me and said: "Nah, my grandmother". And I said, "You know what, you are a monster". And from that moment on to this day, it has always been Grandma and Monster - and we have the greatest friendship.

When I go to a race where he's racing, he'll always text me: "Hey, Grandma, what are you up to? I've just seen you. Come over here." And when people hear us talking, they get confused because we're calling each other Monster and Grandma, and most of the time we use the F-word in front of those names as well.

That was when I got a job at BMW. Guido Stalmann, who is now coming back with Audi, was head of motorsport communications at BMW when they were building engines for Williams. And he asked me if I'd be willing to work for them as a press officer in the European Touring Car Championship. So I came to Munich, had an interview and proceeded to work with them for the next 16 years.

They soon came back to F1 with a works team, they had touring cars, sports cars, rallying, DTM, Formula BMW. And they were great and fun 16 years. I loved Formula BMW. I still have my kids in F1. Nico Hulkenberg, Carlos Sainz... At one point we had 10 former Formula BMW drivers in the pit lane and the most famous of course was Seb Vettel.

And then I was back at Williams, now with Lance Stroll, as his press officer. And I really enjoyed working with him. I like Lance. And I think he's been treated unfairly in his early days. A lot of people just criticised him for being his father's son. But you can't choose who your father is.

He's probably not the best driver in the world, but he's not the worst either. But some of the comments about him were just over the top. And of course Lance didn't like the media because of all that. But he always said that I had his back, and I did. I always told him, "OK, it's tough. They're going to give you a hard time. But if you run away from them, they're going to give you the worst time. Let's go and confront them." And to his credit, he did what he had to do.

I work with race organisers now. It's a bit different. I've done the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix quite a few times, on and off, since their first year in F1. This year it was Qatar. I've done so many different ones: I did Australia, I did Indianapolis, I did India, I did Austin, Malaysia, Mexico… Next year I'm going to do Saudi Arabia. And I think it's nice to go around the world and meet new people who are also passionate about motorsport. Because at the end of the day, that's what we all have in common.

Drivers, engineers, journalists, press officers. We all just love motor racing.

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar

After a spell as Stroll's press officer, Bradshaw now works with circuits