Grapevine: Williams to Auction GP Collection

The team hold an impressive private collection of cars, the Williams Grand Prix Collection, in the Oxfordshire base, which includes many cars from the 28-year history of the company.

But continual additions to the collection has forced the team to consolidate its contents and some of the star cars from the team's past will take pride of place in the auction.

Nigel Mansell's Williams Honda FW10B, in which he won his inaugural Grand Prix at Brands Hatch in 1985, and the FW14B in which he won six Grands Prix en route to his World Championship title in 1992 will both be auctioned off.

Damon Hill's FW18 from his World Championship season in 1996 will be up for grabs as will Grand Prix winning cars used by Riccardo Patrese, Alain Prost, Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher.

Team boss Sir Frank Williams said: "I am delighted our long-standing policy of retaining our race cars allows us to maintain a world-class museum collection and release some race cars from our Reserve collection to private collectors.

"In addition to the 20 race cars, there are some interesting additional items such as Renault Clio Williams chassis no 0001 and around one hundred other items which I hope will make the sale of great interest."

Along with the complete cars and rolling chassis to be offered from the Reserve Collection, the sale will include some 100 plus lots of factory parts and associated memorabilia from the team's own archives.

This will include the damaged wishbone from Damon Hill's clash with Michael Schumacher in the 1994 Australian Grand Prix and the race suit in which Jacques Villeneuve claimed the 1997 World Championship in Jerez.