Claire Williams explained that financial misfortune during the Covid-stricken 2020 Formula 1 season led to her family selling their beloved team.
The Williams F1 outfit, founded by the late great Sir Frank (Claire’s father), was a supreme force through the 1980s and ’90s.
However, the 21st century saw the team enter a steady decline, which ramped up in the 2010s due to financial strife.
The Williams family was forced to sell the team to the American investment firm Dorilton Capital in August 2020.
Speaking on the Business of Sport YouTube channel, C. Williams said: “We just ran out of money, not to put too fine a point on it.”
Williams entered 2020 with ROKiT as a title sponsor, before the telecoms company pulled out of the deal.
The Grove-based outfit chased outstanding funds in court and worked to fill the financial hole ROKiT left.
“When you lose a title sponsor, when they’re not paying and it’s there now, we took them to court and we won,” Williams said.
“They owe us 30-odd million quid, which is half the money they actually owed us. They’ve had the court judgment to say that.
“They obviously didn’t pay and that obviously left a huge hole in our budget going into 2020.
“We were very fortunate in that we had someone that came along and plugged that gap for us so we were able to start the season.”
Covid ‘the final nail in the coffin’ for Williams F1 family ownership
Misfortune struck again through Covid, which delayed the start of the F1 season to the summer of 2020 after the Australian season-opener was cancelled at the 11th hour.
“We didn’t go racing until July that year, and when you don’t go racing you don’t get money,” Williams explained.
“That was the final nail in our coffin, so it was a thing completely out of our hands unfortunately, as events transpired. I will live with the heartbreak of losing it every single day.
“It wasn’t a decision that we made as a family to sell because we’d had enough of Formula 1 or wanted to cash out.
“We all wanted to stay in it. It was our life forever, that was the plan. I wanted to run the team for my son or my nephews.”
Dorilton deal tinged with regret
Williams explained that Dorilton represented “the kind of people we wanted to sell [the F1 team] to” but regrets not holding onto a stake in the outfit.
“I’m quite gutted that as part of the deal I didn’t just say we want to retain five per cent,” she said.
Still, Williams is grateful that Dorilton “would look after the [F1] team, look after their legacy and look after the people that we loved and that were our family.
“We were very lucky because 2020 was a horrible time for everybody. People were not buying businesses and they certainly weren’t buying flailing Formula 1 teams.
“We were very fortunate that these people came along and they did exactly that, and so that was the greatest outcome that we could have had.”
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