In 2002, Claire Williams started as a junior press officer at Williams F1 – the team her father Frank Williams founded in 1977.
Twelve years later, Claire is the deputy team principal of what has been this season’s third-best marque.
Sport360°’s Reem Abulleil caught up with Claire to discuss her journey in the sport and find out more about Williams’ 2014 revival.
Q You’re one of only two women who are at that management level in F1. It’s such a male-dominated sport, did that ever discourage you?
A No not at all. In fact it probably encouraged me. You say that there aren’t that many women. No there aren’t, but that’s changing quickly. We’ve got more women than we’ve ever had in the sport and that’s increasing year on year.
We’ve got Monisha Kaltenborn at Sauber, who’s another team principal, and we’ve got a female driver at Williams, our development driver Susie Wolff. So there are some females now at high-profile and visible roles in our sport doing some jobs that have traditionally been seen as jobs for the boys.
Speaking of Susie Wolff, she became the first female to drive an F1 car at a grand prix in over two decades at Silverstone in July. How significant was that step?
It’s been 22 years since a woman has taken to a race weekend so for Susie to do that was groundbreaking. It is important because we want to encourage more girls to come into our sport and Susie acts as a role model to encourage girls and to show them that women can come into F1 and compete. It’s important to note that F1 is one of the few sports out there where women can compete with men. They don’t allow it in football, they don’t allow it in tennis… that grid, you could have 19 women on there and two men.
What’s been your biggest challenge since you took up this role?
I think the performance issue was the biggest thing for us clearly where we were last year, trying to change it around. But that wasn’t necessarily a challenge because I’d known for years really what needed to be done.
I suppose last year for me from a personal perspective. I lost my mother pretty much at the same time as I became deputy team principal and having to literally fly out on the night of her funeral to do my first race weekend as deputy team principal was probably the biggest challenge. But my mum always taught me ‘stiff up a lip and get on with it’.
You must be proud of being in the position to fight for P3 in the constructors’ championship. Did you see it coming?
If you would have said that to me this time last year, ‘you’ll be third in Abu Dhabi next year’ I would have said ‘there’s no chance’. We knew with the changes we were making we would improve our position but from a realistic perspective we were looking at sixth, maybe fifth if we were lucky.
You’re sticking with the same driver line-up of Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas for 2015, what do you appreciate the most about them?
For me the most important thing that they both deliver is teamwork. They really understand that for us, who we are as a team and how we function as a business, teamwork is what will ensure our sustainability into the future. Because as an independent team, where we finish in the constructors’ championship is a paramount importance. The better we do, the more prize money we get and the more sponsorship we’re going to bring in.
So in order to make sure that you finish in the highest possible place in the constructors’, you need drivers that are going to compete for the team, not for themselves.
Do you feel F1 is getting too expensive?
I think that in any business you have to operate with a certain degree of appropriateness. And I don’t think spending $250-300 million a year to go racing is appropriate, particularly with the economic climate as it is. And particularly because that doesn’t create a level playing field in our sport and therefore it forces out the teams that can’t possibly dream of raising that budget. F1, though, is an expensive business.
At Williams, we operate on a budget of about $110m a year and we believe that to be an appropriate budget to go racing on. So for us that’s the heart of our philosophy. And I think we’ve proved this year that you can be successful on a budget half the size of the top teams. Hopefully, on Sunday we’ll take that P3 and we will have come ahead of a team that has spent twice as much as we did.
Bernie Ecclestone says that he prefers to see three Ferrari cars on the grid rather than teams that are struggling at the back. What’s your take on that?
F1 for me has had the same DNA since it was established. That DNA to me is important, that’s what I believe our sport to be about. And that’s having constructors that line up two cars on a grid on a Sunday. And we have a grid that comprises 20-24 race cars. That to me is the optimum.
However, if we are in that climate where we are losing teams. I think first we need to be addressing the reason why, probably because we haven’t done enough for cost control and we need to address that. Because I think if we get to a point where Ferrari or Mercedes or Red Bull field three cars that completely takes away the DNA of our sport.
A couple of teams now are fielding some really young drivers, how do you feel about having teenagers on the grid?
I think if they have the talent – which some of these drivers clearly do – then that’s great. But, for me, it’s about the experience. These cars, yes they’re as safe as we can possibly make them, but there’s also 20 other drivers out there driving with those young guys. And I think we have to protect the racetrack against that immaturity for the safety of everybody.
