Sir Francis Owen Garbett Williams CBE (16 April 1942 – 28 November 2021) was a British businessman, motorsport executive and racing driver.

[2][3] At the time, his father served as an active Royal Air Force officer, while his mother worked as a school teacher.

In the late 1950s, a friend gave Williams a ride in his Jaguar XK150, which immediately served to catalyse his interest in fast cars.

In 1971, he raced Henri Pescarolo with a chassis purchased from March Engineering; 1972 saw the first F1 car built by the Williams works, the Politoys FX3 designed by Len Bailey.

[8] Williams, short on cash and conducting team business from a telephone box after being disconnected for unpaid bills, looked to Marlboro and Iso Rivolta, an Italian car company, for sponsorship.

The two partners acquired an empty carpet warehouse in Didcot, Oxfordshire, and announced the formation of Williams Grand Prix Engineering, a new team to compete in Formula One.

Later, he brought in Frank Dernie formerly of Hesketh Racing who added additional knowledge with suspension geometry, aerodynamics and the ability to write his own computer programming (an extremely rare skill at the time).

[citation needed] The team's first win came when Clay Regazzoni drove the Cosworth-powered Williams FW07 to victory at the 1979 British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

[18] He was driving with team sponsorship manager Peter Windsor in a hired Ford Sierra from the Paul Ricard Circuit to Nice Côte d'Azur Airport when the incident happened.

[19][20][21] During the drive to the airport, he lost control of the hire car on a slight left-hand kink in the road, clipping a low stone wall, causing the vehicle to leave the highway.

She organised his urgent repatriation to England, where doctors at Royal London Hospital performed a tracheotomy, which then allowed his lungs to be drained of fluid, almost certainly saving his life.

[21] Virginia wrote an autobiographical book published in 1991, A Different Kind of Life, in which she describes her experiences in the Formula One team's formative years and her husband's near-fatal accident.