600 races is a huge achievement for Williams

The last two weeks have been extremely busy for the team, with back to back races in Great Britain and Germany. These races were more hectic than usual because Williams was celebrating a very important milestone. Last weekend’s German Grand Prix was the team’s 600th Grand Prix start in the Formula 1 world championship.

Six hundred races is a huge achievement. Only two other teams have started more races—Ferrari and McLaren.

Williams have played a massive role in the history of Formula 1 and although I was only born in 1989, all the time I’ve been watching the sport they have been a very important team.

My first memory of them was playing video games when I was young. I think it was about the time of Alain Prost’s 1993 car and I remember I used to play as his yellow and blue car on the Super Nintendo.

The next memory I have is of the famous 1997 world title decider when Jacques Villeneuve was in his Williams chasing down Michael Schumacher for the championship.

I was really fond of that car in those blue and white colours and I’ve seen that chassis recently. It’s housed in Williams’ museum inside their factory in Oxfordshire and did you know that it still has the mark on the sidepod on the left-hand side of the car where Schumacher turned in and hit Villeneuve!

When I first went to the Williams factory, I visited the museum and saw the old collection of drivers’ helmets which are kept in a display cabinet. There are loads of really famous ‘lids’ from former legends, although to be fair, I wasn’t that great at identifying them all as many of them were a little before my time…

There was one helmet that was easily recognisable—that was Keke Rosberg’s. Back in Finland, everyone knows who Williams are because Keke won the world title with them back in 1982. Williams have had periods where they were unbeatable, such as the 1980s and 1990s and even in the early 2000s, with Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya, who came very close to winning the world championship.

The team’s success and longevity is not just down to our team principal Sir Frank Williams and co-founder Patrick Head—it includes all of the guys in the race team and back at the factory. Some of the support team, who also look after our historic cars, are the same mechanics who ran those cars to victories and championships.

Williams is a pure racing team—racing is everything and always will be. Frank is instrumental to that and when Patrick was here he was too.

A number of times I’ve heard Patrick start talking with the sentence: “I remember back in the good old days…” We don’t see Patrick as much now, as he’s enjoying his life outside of Formula 1, so fortunately for me I’ve just about managed to avoid being shouted at by him!

I have spoken to Frank a bit about the old days and I have asked him about the legendary Ayrton Senna and he’s told me quite a lot about him—about how motivated he was and how he wanted to be the best and how racing was everything for him. He’s said a lot of good things about his past drivers, especially all the world champions who have driven for him. There’s always been a lot of good words.

But Frank never gives up. Even now when I see him, he always asks me about the car and how it feels, how it compares to previous iterations and what its strengths and weaknesses are. He always wants to know the smallest of details.

He’s always had that very competitive spirit and the desire to succeed and that’s why it’s been very special for me to enter Formula 1 this year with such a legendary team. Here’s to the next 600 races…

(The writer, Valtteri Bottas, is a Finnish racing driver who currently drives for Williams in F1)