The plan to rejuvenate a wilting F1 dynasty

On the outskirts of Ascot, on the Berkshire border, Claire Williams is putting her 19-month-old son down for an afternoon nap.

She descends the staircase and places a finger to her lips to indicate hushed tones while Nate drifts off.

We've been invited to her home for a snapshot of domesticity before the madness of Formula 1 resumes. It's a chance to glean perspective on the demands of a working mum who is also the deputy team principal of an F1 team.

We're welcomed into this bright home by her husband Marc Harris, recently tasked with establishing a bespoke young driver programme for Williams, which has Formula 2 title contender Nicholas Latifi and Jamie Chadwick - a race winner in the nascent all-female W Series - already on its books.

As we chat over coffee (while mindful of not spilling a drop on the immaculate white sofas) ahead of the serious discussion about her life growing up as Sir Frank Williams's daughter and the current plight of the team, we talk TV shows. Claire is a self-confessed fan of boxsets, gameshows and sitcoms.

"When we were young we always used to sit around the TV together and watch Coronation Street as a family," she says. "Although Dad didn't. The only show he would watch was Dynasty. He loved it."

It's perhaps apt that she has taken over the family's business of running a Formula 1 team and does so while balancing bringing up the next generation. Nate will often accompany Claire to races, although, as she explains, that wasn't the way her father did things...

F1 Racing: When you were growing up, you didn't go to that many grands prix did you?

Claire Williams: We didn't go to any, we weren't allowed. Dad never took us. But I get that. He was busy with a dream and a mission, and ferrying his wife and kids around would only get in the way of that. No one else takes their family to work, so why should he?

I remember going to a few grands prix with my brothers, like Silverstone, but it was a case of not being seen or heard, so we had to make ourselves busy doing jobs in the kitchen or wandering around the merchandise area. I remember getting lost once crying my eyes out behind the back of the Benetton motorhome and a very nice lady rescued me. It's different today, as I might take Nate to a few races. I'm proud of that, I don't care what people think about it - I'm a working mum. But that's a different generation and a different mindset.

When I was growing up, Dad never took any money out of the business, so it wasn't like we lived a lavish lifestyle. When I went to an overseas race at 14, I travelled with team manager Dickie Stanford and the team. Frank had a private plane - but we never went on it as a family. We didn't have boats or things like that. I've always loved being properly inside the race team and understanding it. I love the people that work for us and who are so passionate for F1. I used to like staying at the track late, getting a rag to clean the car in the garage or making tea for the mechanics. Maybe they thought I was an annoying teenager who didn't get out of their way when they were busy, but all I remember was everyone was very lovely to me.

F1R: But even back then, it was never your goal to one day take over and run the team. Didn't you go to university to study Spanish and Portuguese?

CW: How the hell did you find that out? It's supposed to be a secret! I failed and I was thrown out. I loved Spanish and went to Newcastle, but they only did the course with Portuguese as well, yet I didn't know a single word.

After years at an all-girls boarding school, suddenly I was in the wider world, had a little car and was bombing around all over the place. Studying was not on my agenda whatsoever. I failed that course and pleaded with them to let me stay and study politics, and they agreed.

Amusingly Newcastle University got in touch recently to say they were holding an alumni hall of fame and there's now a huge banner of my face with 'Claire Williams OBE 1994-99'. At the time, no one knew who I was. They are now celebrating one of the most unsuccessful students they have ever had!

F1R: When do you refer to your father as "Frank" and when is he "Dad"?

CW: If I'm talking personal things with someone I know and trust then a lot of it is Dad. If I'm at work it's always Frank.

F1R: After graduating you worked at Silverstone in the press office, then for six years in the communications office at Williams. How did you go from there to running the team?

CW: As I said earlier, I always enjoyed working at the team, whether it was franking the mail when I was six, stealing stationary from the cupboard, working in the travel office or going to races in the press office. I was happy doing the latter, I never asked for pay rises or promotions.

Then we had a few changes. Adam Parr came in as CEO and in about 2010 I was promoted to head of communications and soon after I was in charge of investor relations when we became a listed company. Then my remit oversaw the marketing, commercial and sponsorship department. From being the most junior person in it, suddenly the department was mine.

Parr was the architect for my upward trajectory and he put me on the board in 2012 to represent the family share-holding as commercial director. I remember going to my first board meeting and I've never been more terrified.

Toto [Wolff] was with us at the time as a shareholder and was helping with the team post-Adam Parr, but then he got a call from Mercedes that winter. He got Bernie Ecclestone involved and suggested I move into the deputy team principal role just a few weeks after my mum [Virginia Williams] died in 2013. It all happened very quickly, going from press officer to having six promotions in four years. My head was spinning.

F1R: The last GP your mother attended was at Barcelona in 2012. That was an eventful weekend for the team. At the time of writing, it was the most recent victory for Williams in F1...

CW: It was an extraordinary weekend and one I'll never forget. It was Dad's 70th birthday celebrations and we had a big party where all the lovely people in the paddock came and joined us. Pastor Maldonado qualified second and then Lewis Hamilton was disqualified. We were celebrating Frank's 70th when we heard we were on pole.

Then the race. Oh my god, I couldn't believe we were leading and I don't know why there aren't more heart attacks among team principals in F1. I was trying to pacify myself because Fernando Alonso was on his gearbox for lap after lap. I know people say it was a fluke, but Pastor had his moments and I also feel that weekend God was looking down on us because it was my Mum's last ever race which she came to. She was more ill than she made out to anybody.

She was so heartbroken at that time with how Williams had fallen. One of my greatest regrets was she didn't see the success we had in 2014 and 2015.

Pastor won the race and I was doing some TV interviews in front of our garage and all of a sudden the cameraman just dropped his camera on the floor and I remember thinking, 'well that's a bit bloody rude!' I heard this commotion and I turned around and everyone was running away.

Holy shit, what the hell is going on?! There was a big explosion and pandemonium broke out. I couldn't believe it. My memory is pretty poor, but the pitlane fire we had was so vivid. I was head of comms at the time and the crisis policy was my responsibility to make sure all our mechanics were together - but they were scattered everywhere.

Mum was in the motorhome, while Dad and I were in the garage and we all got separated. Mum was terrified thinking we had all been blown-up in the garage. Thankfully Christian Horner helped her and took her to Red Bull to be looked after. No one knew what had happened, it was chaos.

I was at the track very late into the following morning and was awake all night dealing with stuff as we had one member of the team who was quite badly injured. It was just horrific, dealing with something so big. Barcelona for me is just a track that has high emotions: last race we won, last race Mum came to, and the awful fire - plus the dramas in testing this year. I always have to look for positives about that track.

F1R: Did the disaster that weekend make you consider what the team went through at Imola in 1994, when Ayrton Senna suffered his fatal accident?

CW: I was 16 at the time and at home, so I've really only spoken to Ann Bradshaw, our press officer at the time, about that weekend. She had to deal with the team and the media. Losing a driver is the one thing that terrifies me, because I've been brought up with Dad having those experiences and that's the one thing as a team principal that keeps me up at night. I find that thought absolutely horrendous.

F1R: Have you spoken to Frank about Imola?

CW: No, I've never spoken to him about it. He doesn't talk about it. Being in the position I am now, I know that if I lost one of my drivers I don't know how I would deal with it. To carry on shows an extraordinary tenacity. I think it would be too much of an invasion of his privacy to ask him. That generation is very private. They don't spill their emotions - and Dad never has, as I know it deeply, deeply affected him.

F1R: When you were young, you had an embarrassing moment with Ayrton in your pyjamas once didn't you?

CW: Yes I did... I'm delighted that I've shared that with the world. Sometimes I feel my role is like an out of body experience. I pinch myself that I was born into this amazing world and I am the daughter of Frank and Virginia Williams, two amazing people who have done such extraordinary things. With Marc and I, the stage we are at in our lives, this was the point Dad had his accident. I think to myself, what if Marc had an accident now? How would I deal with that? To have your husband as a quadriplegic. I don't know how my mother dealt with that. I find it extraordinary.

To think that Ayrton Senna saw me in my 'jammies', it's a bit odd. I remember Nigel Mansell taking me to a fair in Zandvoort when I was about four. How cool is that? I used to hang out with Mark Thatcher's bodyguards and as kids we'd ask them if we could look at their guns... it's the most extraordinary life and I don't take any of it for granted. My parents made us understand the important values in life: manners, respect, courtesy, kindness, and not taking anything for granted.

F1R: From your current position, can you explain what has caused Williams to slide?

CW: Firstly, it's really easy for people to forget that we've had one bad year. All these people calling for me to resign... hold on. I took the team from ninth and eighth in 2011 and 2012 to two third places in 2014 and 2015. People forget that.

CEO Mike O'Driscoll and I inherited a team that had been left to languish across a number of key areas, whether it was engineering or operations. In hindsight, we probably only made surface changes, such as the engine, drivers and bringing in a title partner and a few senior people.

If I'm honest, it was early days for me - I didn't know what I know now - and because we were doing well we didn't continuously look at things that weren't quite right. We had changes in technical people over that period that took us into 2015 and 2016 and things started declining from around then.

It's difficult to say it was exactly one thing, a number of things put you in that position. We know what they are and we know we can fix them. Obviously aero is a crucial performance differentiator and if you haven't got that right, you're screwed. But we have other areas of weakness in our team where we need to improve. We haven't had a proper planning function in place. Operations have got some issues, we have weaknesses in aero and a whole number of departments.

We perhaps needed to hit rock bottom to work out what those issues are. Now we know what the problems are we have a plan in place, which will become clearer over the next six months. We knew that it wouldn't be the work of a moment to get us back to where we want to get to. People are very impatient in F1 and I understand that. I can't click my fingers and produce a solution for tomorrow.

Frank took a decade to get his F1 team on track. We have averaged P6 over the past ten years and we just had one terrible year last year and yes, this year is going to be terrible - but there are clear reasons for that.

F1R: What is the plan to return Williams to the glory days?

CW: Well, the general landscape of F1 hasn't helped our cause. The listed parts issue, which created collaborations between teams such as Ferrari and Haas, hasn't helped us and I don't believe it's in line with the true DNA of our sport. If that's the direction the sport is going then we can decide whether we want to be part of a sport where collaboration takes place.

Then there's the complete disparity of income between teams. We are a long-serving team where we make everything in-house and that's probably cost us over the past couple of years.

Teams like Haas have half our workforce and make half the stuff. We've probably not been quick enough to respond to those circumstances, or we never had the foresight to see them coming.

We now need to make sure Williams is fit for purpose in the future. If we have the regulations we believe are coming for 2021: greater financial restrictions (i.e. the cost cap) and a more equitable distribution of prize fund, then I think Williams will be in a very strong place come 2021 and beyond.

I'm not going to talk about recent drivers or management. It's been a difficult journey, but there are many positives. We have a new title sponsor, Rokit, which is supportive of us and the Williams brand, and two great drivers who are smart enough to help our engineers.

So many fans have stuck by us because we have this fighting spirit and we don't give up when times are tough. It's important to have that resilience when people scream at you or criticize you. I know we are heading in the right direction. We are in F1 because we love it. The nature of the sport means you have bad times and good times - and only one person can win.

I still believe I'm doing the best job I can for the team. Williams has a huge resilience and will be in our sport for a long time to come.