“We used to go and visit Frank at the weekends. It wasn’t until my mother
wrote about it that we appreciated the enormity. Frank was lying in the bed
unconscious and it was up to my mother to make sure he was given the care he
needed. She was the one who kept him alive, but we didn’t know any of that
until her book out.”
Sir Frank was once implacably opposed to the notion of Claire joining
Williams, fearing that the company he had so lovingly crafted would be
exposed to charges of nepotism. But when she received her latest promotion
almost 12 months ago, inheriting a brief that encompasses lead driver Pastor
Maldonado’s £29 million-a-year sponsorship from the Venezuelan government,
he spoke instead of a “gradual but inevitable process of handing over the
reins”.
The sense has grown more than ever, given his manifest frailties, of Claire
cast as the one chosen to restore Williams to their early Nineties zenith,
to the days of Nigel Mansell and the days of 120,000 fervent Union
flag-wavers at the British Grand Prix.
“It really freaked me out when he said that,” she says, smiling indulgently.
“When I first came here, he was not keen on the idea at all. He didn’t want
to be seen to have his children working at Williams.
“But his view, over the years, has softened – he likes people who work hard. I
had a lot to prove at the beginning, and I got my head down. I hope that he
feels I do a fairly decent job.”
It is a reflection of the ties that bind Williams that Claire’s elder brother
Jonathan also works at the team headquarters in Grove, in the rolling
Oxfordshire countryside, while her boyfriend works as Maldonado’s race
engineer. “We try to keep our distance at races,” she says, with the
cultivated professionalism of one who represents the family’s interests to
the board of directors.
“I have been promoted four times in the past 18 months, so everything has been
happening quite quickly. People have been speculating, whispering ‘that will
be your role one day’, and as I keep making these steps up I suppose it is
becoming a deeper conversation.
“But Frank is still our team principal. He turned 70 last year and continues
to come into the office seven days a week. At the moment I’m very content to
work alongside him, learning as much as I can. Whether I take over one day
is yet to be seen.”
She describes the fierce work ethic and calmness in challenging situations
that she acquired from her celebrated father, but the most salutary life
lesson has flowed from the stoicism and matter-of-factness with which he has
always treated his paralysis.
“You have to be like that, if you are going to survive that level of
disability,” she argues. “Otherwise it could become all-consuming. Frank has
always had this team to give him a reason to fight, to keep going. He loves
racing, he wouldn’t want to be sitting at home. He would want to be here.”
Williams’s travails are self-evident as they chase their avowed ambition to
win a first world championship since 1997 by 2016. At Albert Park on Sunday,
Maldonado span out and Finnish rookie Valtteri Bottas finished only 14th,
but Claire is clear that advances have been made since the nadir of 2011,
when the team claimed a paltry five points during the entire campaign. “2011
was awful, upsetting,” she admits.
“It was soul-destroying. The worst part was that at the end of every grand
prix, when the drivers came home 15th or 16th, seeing the boys in the
garage. Those guys work so hard, travel so far, and they leave their
families. To see the disappointment on their faces is the hardest thing to
deal with, because you know that you have let them down.”
In her expanded duties this season, she is determined not to succumb to
similar anguish, and to continue the upward trajectory suggested by
Maldonado’s triumph in Barcelona last May.
“There’s a saying, isn’t there? ‘With great success comes great heartache’.
The peaks and troughs of F1 are well known. For us, the glory days of the
early Nineties were fantastic, but that is not to say they are over or they
are gone.
“Winning is such an extraordinary emotion. I still remember exactly how I felt
when we won in Spain, and I want to feel it again. Finally, we are climbing
out of the trough.”