How its faltering first turbo car advanced a Williams-Honda glory era

Aesthetics count for little in Formula 1. The FW09 was neither the prettiest nor the fastest car to emerge from the Williams works, but it remains a pivotal machine in the team’s – and F1’s – history. It was the first turbocharged Williams, the first manufacturer-aligned Williams, and the car which delivered Honda to the winners’ circle upon its return to the world championship.

As early as 1981 it had become obvious to Frank Williams that he needed a supply of turbocharged engines to remain competitive over the long term. The question was who that supplier might be – certainly not Ferrari or Renault, since they had their own teams which they would naturally prioritise. Honda emerged as a potential candidate. Throughout that year word circulated that the Japanese giant might be tempted back to the top category as an engine supplier rather than an entrant in its own right.

In Formula 2, Geoff Lees was beating the likes of Thierry Boutsen, Eje Elgh (now Marcus Ericsson’s manager), Stefan Johansson and Michele Alboreto to the European championship aboard a Honda-powered Ralt chassis. Frank opened a line of communication with Honda, acknowledged with polite interest, but it became clear the company didn’t see itself as being ready for F1 competition until 1983 at the earliest, and even then it sought a low-profile entrance. Williams would just have to wait – with mounting angst, since high-profile backer Mansour Ojjeh transferred his allegiance to McLaren and was persuaded to underwrite development of a new Porsche-built turbo V6 for that team’s exclusive use.

For 1982 Honda supported Boutsen’s team manager John Wickham to found a new F2 team, Spirit, with ex-McLaren engineers Gordon Coppuck and John Baldwin designing the chassis (initially in a rented house in Camberley). If successful they might move on together to F1. And so it came to pass: the marriage of Spirit 201 chassis and naturally aspirated 2-litre Honda V6 proved competitive, and Wickham managed to secure Marlboro backing to run Boutsen and Johansson. They fell short of winning the F2 title but by the end of the season Wickham was informed that Spirit had been chosen to test the prototype F1 engine.

During that time a tragic and ill-tempered F1 season played out in which Gilles Villeneuve and Riccardo Paletti died in needless accidents, and Didier Pironi suffered life-changing injuries. On 25 September, fifth place at the last Caesars Palace Grand Prix was enough for Keke Rosberg to secure the drivers’ championship in his Williams FW08, though the team was only fourth in the constructors’ standings. Two months later Spirit decamped to the US to perform the first track tests of Honda’s RA163E V6 in secret with a modified F2 tub at Willow Springs and Riverside Raceway.

Honda was reluctant to join the F1 ranks and face immediate scrutiny

Photo by: James Mann

The pre-season period in 1983 was unusually fraught, owing to the FIA diktat mandating all cars to have flat bottoms, eliminating ground effect. For Williams, as with all other teams, that meant a last-minute redesign and carrying inherent compromise through the season. But Frank already had an eye on the following year: in February 1983, just a few weeks before travelling to Brazil for the opening round, he signed a contract with Honda for 1984.

The company was less certain about its plans for 1983: Spirit wanted to race, but didn’t receive a firm commitment until the night before the closing date for entries in early March. That meant the opening rounds would be out of the question but Spirit put Johansson on the grid of the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in April, with the RA163E installed in the back of an F2 chassis. It lasted five laps before expiring in a cloud of smoke when a turbo seal failed.

Electrical problems and other reliability issues stymied Spirit’s progress from its debut at Silverstone onwards. Its bespoke F1 car, the 101, arrived late and endured a troubled first appearance at Monza, after which Honda officially pulled the plug

As it would three decades later when re-entering F1 during the hybrid era, Honda required several iterative attempts to get its engine package right. The RA163E was based on the same architecture as the F2 engine, but with a shorter stroke to bring its swept capacity down to the 1.5-litre limit. It was already an oversquare design; chief engineer Nobuhiko Kawamoto and his team had stripped and analysed the engines built by their F2 competitors, noted the 89mm bore of the four-cylinder BMW, and designed their V6 with a 90mm bore in the belief that the greater piston surface area would yield one and a half times the power. This theory was unproved in F2 and would remain that way in F1. The electronic fuel injection, used at the insistence of Soichiro Honda himself, also proved problematic.

Given the disadvantage of running with a naturally aspirated engine Williams had a decently competitive 1983 season with the much-modified FW08C, although the returning Jacques Laffite proved disappointingly anonymous. Rosberg, however, was at his fiery best. At Monaco, where rain ahead of the start made track conditions treacherous for the peaky turbo-powered runners, Rosberg seized the moment and ran clear on slick tyres. There would be only one more grand prix win for a naturally aspirated engine (Alboreto in Detroit) until 1989.

The Williams W09 made its debut at the 1983 finale before its full season run

Photo by: James Mann

Meanwhile electrical problems and other reliability issues stymied Spirit’s progress from its debut at Silverstone onwards. Its bespoke F1 car, the 101, arrived late and endured a troubled first appearance at Monza, after which Honda officially pulled the plug.

Williams therefore got hold of the Honda engines a race earlier than expected, and was able to introduce the FW09 at the season-closing South African Grand Prix. Although an evolution of the FW08C, the new car featured a new front-end aerodynamic treatment with a tall, stubby nose replacing the broad, flat prow of the previous car. Longer sidepods were required to accommodate the requisite turbocharger plumbing, while a larger rear wing was also necessary to tame all that extra power.

Technical director Patrick Head hadn’t yet reconciled himself to adopting full carbonfibre construction, so the FW09’s chassis was a traditional aluminium honeycomb design featuring a handful of carbonfibre inlays. This would prove to be one of the car’s key flaws.

Between the peaky power delivery of the Honda V6 and the car’s tendency to flex under duress, the drivers could never be sure which way the FW09 would hop next. Rosberg, a gifted and abnormally brave driver, described it as a car in which “you had to hang on for dear life”.

While Laffite qualified 10th and spun off on the second lap, Rosberg qualified sixth and finished fifth at Kyalami, albeit a lap down on the leading group. The FW09’s shortcomings would not be revealed in full until the following season.

Although Rosberg finished second in the punishing heat of the 1984 season opener at Jacarepaguá, he was 40s down on race winner Alain Prost. McLaren’s new MP4/2 set a new benchmark in F1 car design; not only was it John Barnard’s second full carbon monocoque, it had been developed in tandem with the new TAG-Porsche engine. The V6 and all its ancillaries had been packaged within a silhouette drawn by Barnard and policed by him throughout development (he remains happy to admit that if he caught Porsche’s engineers deviating from his carefully drawn outline, he would scream down the phone at them). In comparison the Honda V6 was a sprawling mess of pipework, as evinced by the FW09’s comparatively portly posterior.

A fast but unreliable car, the FW09 took one F1 win in the wild 1984 Dallas GP

Photo by: James Mann

The Honda engine continued to be unreliable, and Williams registered eight double-DNFs over the course of the 16-race season, 21 failures in all. The one bright spot came at the unloved Dallas street circuit in July; on a brutally hot day Rosberg overcame many challenges, including a disintegrating track surface, to win by 22s from Ferrari’s Rene Arnoux.

At the following round Williams introduced the B-spec FW09 with a slightly lighter chassis and revised aerodynamics, including a replica of what Barnard referred to as the “Coke bottle” on his MP4/2: a more tightly waisted section behind the sidepods to optimise airflow between the rear wheels and the engine/gearbox shroud. But aero was among the least of the car’s problems.

In Austria the reason for Rosberg’s retirement is listed as ‘handling’. This euphemistic description covers an unpalatable truth: the car was dangerously undriveable. Back then, what is now Turn 4 of the Red Bull Ring was a fast, downhill 180-degree curve with no run-off. Under any reasonable cornering load the car would just let go. Rosberg headed to the pits from ninth place and bluntly told Head: “I cannot drive it.”

Another lesson provided by the FW09 was that Williams had to produce a more rigid chassis, and to that end Head and his team adopted full carbon composite construction for the 1985 FW10

Patrick was always one to take an uncompromising view of drivers and the task they were employed to perform. The previous year, in Brazil, Rosberg had jumped out of his FW08C when it briefly caught fire in the pits, only to be instructed to “Get back in the f****** car.”

On this day at the Osterreichring Head offered no argument.

The proliferation of failures to score meant Rosberg finished eighth in the drivers’ standings, Laffite 14th; Williams rounded out the season sixth in the constructors’ championship. But by this point the reasons were well understood. Many engine breakages were traced to electrical problems or heat-induced piston damage. Honda’s next V6 – introduced early in the 1985 season – would be better packaged, feature a less extreme bore/stroke ratio and deliver greater power in a more linear fashion.

Another lesson provided by the FW09 was that Williams had to produce a more rigid chassis, and to that end Head and his team adopted full carbon composite construction for the 1985 FW10. That car claimed four victories in the hands of Rosberg and new team-mate Nigel Mansell, but even greater glory was around the corner… 

The learnings taken from the W09 would lead to greater feats at Williams

Photo by: James Mann

Williams FW09 race record
Starts: 34   
Wins: 1   
Poles: 0    
Fastest laps: 0   
Podiums: 0    
Championship points: 27.5

Specification
Chassis: Aluminium honeycomb monocoque      
Suspension: Double wishbones with pullrod-actuated inboard coil springs/dampers   
Engine: Turbocharged Honda RA163E 80-degree V6
Engine capacity: 1495cc    
Power: 700bhp @ 11000 rpm   
Gearbox: Six-speed manual
Brakes: Carbon discs front and rear    
Tyres: Goodyear    
Weight: 540kg     
Notable drivers: Keke Rosberg, Jacques Laffite

Far from perfect but the FW09 remains a cornerstone in the storied history of Williams

Photo by: James Mann