Why Formula 1 will miss Patrick Head

A few hours apart, just before New Year, came the news that Adrian Newey had been awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours list and that Patrick Head had stepped down from the board of Williams F1.

It's good to see the sport's central, inspirational characters having their achievements publicly recognised and both Ross Brawn and Newey are deserving recipients of their recent honours. You'd like to think, too, that somewhere down the road there will be similar recognition for Head.

He has been a pivotal figure in so many of the paddock's great stories and developments for more than 30 years. It was slightly surreal to be at the AUTOSPORT Awards listening to Patrick, up on stage, admitting that he was going to "miss it". Times change, of course, but Head is one of those figures who, in your mind, would always be there.

Head admitted that the 'R' word was not really mentionable and that far from retire, he was looking forward to interesting days working with Williams Hybrid Power. The staff at the F1 team, he said, are "a good bunch" and the senior technical guys (chiefly now Mike Coughlan and Mark Gillan) "will do a good job".

It seems like yesterday that Williams co-owner Head was instrumental in employing Newey, who had been responsible for the aerodynamics of a Leyton House that was going indecently quickly in 1990.

Head and Williams spent a generation in charge of the latter's squad © LAT

I can remember, a couple of years earlier, Glenn Waters, who ran the Intersport F3 operation, saying that the Renault V10 being prepared for Williams and of which he himself had some inside info, was going to scare the hell out of the F1 establishment, Honda included.

He was right, and in 1990 Head knew he had a damned good engine in the back of his FW13B. The package was good enough for Riccardo Patrese to win at Imola and for Thierry Boutsen to claim victory at the Hungaroring and finish second at Silverstone. On a consistent basis though, tackling Ayrton Senna's McLaren-Honda with Boutsen and Patrese was a bit like attacking Joe Frazier with a stick of candy floss.

And Head had a sneaking suspicion that his car's aerodynamics were a bit truck-like. Just then, as he told Maurice Hamilton in my fellow scribe's excellent book 'Williams', something rather unexpected happened.

"I didn't really know Adrian - I didn't know his history, his Indycar work," Head says. "But he knew his onions on aerodynamics whereas our guys quite clearly didn't. Leyton House seemed to be in a bit of a mess, particularly as it was being run by an accountant who sacked Adrian because they hadn't qualified in Mexico, only to have that car very nearly win in France!

"I gave Adrian a ring after Mexico and asked him if he'd like to come and work for us. He'd been with us a week and I thought, this guy's pretty astute; he knows much more about racing cars than just aerodynamics. Meanwhile, it was quite clear in many areas that he didn't know much about hydraulic systems, gearboxes and so on.

"I said to Adrian, 'Look, arerodynamics these days are dictating the car layout, so why don't you become chief designer, operating on aerodynamics? I'll look after the gearbox, the active-ride system, brakes, uprights, the systems and whatever.

The active suspension FW14 of 1991 was a Head/Newey design © LAT

"Adrian agreed and said, 'Yes, that sounds fine. By the way, that gearbox you are doing is no good: it goes right through my diffuser...' So I closed my door and spent six weeks designing what would become our first semi-automatic, paddle-shift gearbox. Literally, every drawing had PH on it because I knew there was no way we'd achieve a completely new gearbox system design going through the normal system of democracy.

"Integrating Adrian into the company was interesting. You have to set things up to be able to use his talent and still keep a disciplined system operating."

It was the start of a partnership that produced the best F1 car for the next seven seasons, taking Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve to drivers' titles. The 1992 FW14B, with Newey's aerodynamics, Head's gearbox and properly functioning active ride, was one of the greatest racing cars of all time.

Evidently, Newey hasn't changed much these past 20 years when it comes to a refusal to accept compromise. Head's anecdote about his gearbox messing up Newey's diffuser would probably attract a few knowing nods in Milton Keynes. Only last year Newey wouldn't put his KERS under the fuel tank and accept the centre of gravity penalty, he insisted on putting it at the back, right where it was going to get fried. Sort that one out, lads... And they did.

As is often the case, Newey, when accepting his myriad end-of-season awards, always makes a point of paying tribute to those who work with him. You suspect that in his case, he really means it and, more to the point, that they deserve it!

Head's disappearance from the paddock truly is the end of an era. As well as his engineering pragmatism that brought Williams to prominence in the late 1970s, he was equally straightforward and forthright with his opinions. Never one to be constrained by political correctness, and all the better for it, Head is a great raconteur and whenever he spoke, you were never in need of a microphone...

Alan Jones claimed the first title for Williams and Head in 1980 © LAT

He, Alan Jones and the FW07 were the beginning of the glory days for Williams and Head muses that there was indeed a special relationship between the team owners and the robust Aussie, much of it down to them all being equally straightforward, of a similar age and proving themselves together.

Head also found himself in the middle of a few internal driver wars. There were Jones/Carlos Reutemann and Mansell/Nelson Piquet battling for supremacy and perhaps the best-remembered incident was Reutemann ignoring a Jones/Reut board hung out at the 1981 Brazilian Grand Prix requiring him to cede position, as per his contract.

"When the sign was put out, Carlos did the 'I see no ships' routine. I probably would have done the same. Alan wasn't childish enough to be small-time about it but I don't think he ever said another word to Carlos the whole season. This sort of thing happens. But if you allow yourself to get sucked into driver vendettas, you're in real trouble."

Then there was Mansell/Piquet, when Nigel would sometimes suspect he was being screwed, although he wasn't. Nelson would play on it, doing nothing to dissuade him, the paranoia all spiced up by the best car in the field, and right after Frank's road accident.

"They were excellent when the visors were down and all you could hear was the engine..." is how Head puts it.

Head is an indomitable character, often seen striding around the Williams garage, car in situ, barking into his microphone. I was once told that he had his own channel on the headset, so he could speak to both car crews, but that so loud were his observations that the team had discreetly fitted a 'mute' button. I never did work out whether I was having my leg pulled.

It was a great sadness to everyone at Williams, Head included, that they never got to work for any length of time with Senna and that their days were afflicted by a difficult early FW16 and attendant tensions.

Head has always put himself in the thick of things during his time at Williams © LAT

When remembering Imola 1994, Head candidly wonders how they ever allowed Damon Hill to start in the same car shortly afterwards. He admits that Senna's accident prompted him to consider the 'R' word more than 17 years ago, aged just 47.

F1 was richer for him carrying on. The Williams pre-season lunch was always an annual highlight. You inevitably went home with a tape full of great anecdotes, admittedly not many of which you could actually write about.

We'd also have missed a priceless moment in the Magny-Cours pitlane when he did an impression of the buzz saw he'd heard behind the closed doors of the Ferrari garage where, of course, they hadn't modified some dubious barge boards...

It's fair to say that the Williams-BMW relationship did not always gel and that, sometimes, Head and Dr Mario Theissen were not natural soulmates. It did not, however, stop him passengering Theissen on a classic car rally aboard a very expensive, rare BMW straight from the Munich museum.

During the event, Theissen did not notice an old Mercedes signaling to make a turn. A sizeable shunt ensued. Head, having extracted himself from the foot well and shaken himself down, sat quietly at the road side, where he was unimpressed to find his driver contemplating the impact on his career rather than the impact on Head's legs and ribs.

The way Head told it, over dinner and a few glasses of red, had you in tears. He will be sorely missed and, for the moment anyway, we'll have to award him our own MBE, which stands for 'Most Bullshit Exploded'. Enjoy your non-retirement.