End of Williams as a family-owned F1 team as US investment firm swoops in

A vital piece of Formula One’s soul was lost on Friday as Williams, the last family-owned team and the winner of nine constructors’ titles, passed quietly into the hands of an American private investment house.

On the surface, it was a victory for deputy team principal Claire Williams, in that the company, built by her father from scratch, has been allowed to preserve both its name and its Oxfordshire base. But at a deeper level, the sale offered a grim reflection on an operation that has slipped from third to last on the grid in just five years and whose financial model has been rendered unsustainable by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Williams’ owners for its next chapter are Dorilton Capital, a New York investment firm specialising in the engineering and manufacturing sectors.

According to the Stock Exchange summary, the sale was for £136 million, a modest sum in F1 terms and roughly what Lewis Hamilton could be expected to earn in 3½ years.

In the short term, the move secures Williams’ future at the pinnacle of motorsport, coming a day after F1 agreed its Concorde Agreement, a pact tying all 10 teams to the series until 2025. But it signals an irrevocable shift in identity for Williams, whose founder, Sir Frank, was always implacably opposed to the notion of ceding control. While handing over the business to Dorilton brings economic relief, it signals that the dream he hatched 43 years ago is over, that his team can no longer survive as a family-run entity against the corporate behemoths of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

Sir Frank, increasingly frail at 78 and having long relinquished the day-to-day running of the team over to Claire, was said to be fully supportive of the sale. “As a family, we have always put our team first,” his daughter said. “Making the team successful again and protecting our people has been at the heart of this process from the start. This may be the end of an era for Williams as a family-owned team, but we know it is in good hands. The sale ensures the team’s survival, but more importantly will provide a path to success.”

One cause for optimism for Williams is the promise by Chase Carey, F1’s chief executive, to distribute the sport’s £760 million prize pot from TV rights, hosting fees and advertising revenue more evenly among the teams.

This should lend a competitive advantage to Williams, for whom the gulf to the top three has become impossible to bridge.

Even before coronavirus struck, Williams’ travails were acute. In 2019, they posted a £17 million loss, down from an £8 million profit the year before, after former technical director Paddy Lowe failed even to have a car ready for pre-season testing. Revenues also dropped to £95.4 million last year, the first time that annual turnover had fallen below £100 million since 2014.

Despite the abject returns from recent seasons, Williams have enjoyed an improvement on track in the six races so far in 2020, with George Russell, widely tipped as a future Mercedes driver, regularly duelling with the lower-midfield cars of Haas and Alfa Romeo.

Matthew Savage and Darren Fultz, the chairman and chief executive of Dorilton, created their company in 2009. Savage sought to assure that their “patient investment style” would “allow the team to focus on its objective of returning to the front of the grid”. The difficulty of that task can scarcely be overstated. The last world champion in Williams’ colours was Jacques Villeneuve, in 1997, while the team have failed to win a race since 2012.