Feature: Williams' Week, from Courage to Budweiser

Frank Williams was at Goodwood last weekend to help launch a biography of the late Piers Courage, Grand Prix racer and brewing family heir.

On Wednesday he travelled to London to welcome Budweiser, the world's biggest-selling beer, as one of his Formula One team's big three sponsors.

The two events offered an interesting snapshot of how far Williams has come personally since the 1960s as well as an opportunity to reflect on what the sport has lost and found.

His resurgent team, winners of nine constructors' titles and seven Drivers' Championships since 1980, are now the ones to beat at Sunday's British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Title challenger Ralf Schumacher has led Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya in two successive one-two finishes.

Three points behind Ferrari in the constructors' standings, Williams are poised to seize the lead just as they seem to have snapped up the Budweiser deal from under their rivals' noses.

While smaller private teams such as Minardi and Jordan scrabble around for sponsorship scraps, BMW-powered Williams can show the world that big business is still eager to embrace their part of the paddock.

A win at Silverstone, where Williams won for the first time with Clay Regazzoni in 1979 and celebrated their 100th victory with Jacques Villeneuve in 1997, would be fitting indeed in the 25th season since Williams Grand Prix Engineering was founded.

Empty Pockets

Williams, wheelchair-bound since a 1986 car crash, is a wealthy man.

It was once very different - a point illustrated in a photograph from 1968 that accompanies Williams' own introduction to Adam Cooper's 'Piers Courage; Last of the Gentleman Racers'.

The team boss stands behind his driver, two years before the young Briton died in the blazing wreckage of a Williams-run De Tomaso, with his empty pockets turned out theatrically to demonstrate his lack of funds.

Williams somehow kept going, borrowing money and often living precariously close to the edge. His telephones were cut off and he even ran naked in public to win a bet.

In those days the only beer money coming Williams' way, despite Courage's involvement, was small change to buy a drink or two. Those days are gone, replaced by big business, but not forgotten.

"Piers Courage lived in an era which does not exist today," says Williams, opening his foreword to the biography of a friend who died in the 1970 Dutch Grand Prix aged 28.

"Allowing myself the fewest words possible to explain how I saw Piers, I say that he had a sense of style and humour that I no longer see around me today. It seemed almost everything had an amusing side, and when it inevitably did not, he created one."

Favourite Driver

Courage was Williams' favourite driver, the Briton rejecting the offer of a drive from Enzo Ferrari in favour of remaining with a friend who could not hope to pay as much - a marked contrast to current driver demands.

He never won a race, his best position being second place in Monaco and the United States in 1969, but his potential was clear.

"In my opinion, he was about to step into the ranks of the truly great drivers and was certainly one of the best British Formula One drivers with whom I have been involved," said Williams.

Praise indeed from a man whose cars enabled Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill to become champions and gave David Coulthard and Jenson Button their debuts.

"Indeed, of all the drivers who have driven for me throughout the various times of my private Formula One career, and more recently during my successful association with Patrick Head, he was as gifted with as much car control as anyone I've seen - except perhaps Jochen Rindt," added Williams.

"He was a great man, highly popular and I remember clearly that when he died a nation grieved, as did all of us in Formula One at that time."