Breakfast with ... Claire Williams

Motor Racing - Formula One World Championship - Spanish Grand Prix - Practice Day - Barcelona, Spain

The other thing that your dad and Patrick Head created, not deliberately because PR plans didn’t exist then, is the perception that you are very much THE British team. It’s something that happened effortlessly. I think that sentiment goes for most of us who have worked in the paddock for a long time, even though you’ve got foreign sponsors and, at the moment, no sign of a British driver. Your father, I know is immensely patriotic. Is that something that still guides the team in some way in terms of how it operates, the Britishness of it?

The Britishness - or as Frank always says “We’re English! We’re English!” - is another part of our DNA that runs through us. I think we encapsulate that for our fans and we’ve remained true to that Britishness, despite the fact that we operate internationally. It is an important part of our heritage and a lot of our success came with Nigel, a British driver in a British team. I think the kind of character of our team, the underdog, the fighters, it encapsulates the British spirit, the British mentality.

You’d like to lose the underdog tag though, wouldn’t you? You were top dog for a long time.

We’d like to be top dog but while we’re fighting... I think underdog has some slightly negative connotations but the positive connotations are good as well.

I prefer to think of us as scrappy fighters. We’re like a little terrier that won’t give up. We’re going to bite your leg until we get you.

Motor Racing - Formula One World Championship - Australian Grand Prix - Race Day - Melbourne, Australia

On the subject of British, what about the British Grand Prix and the fact that you actually worked at Silverstone? What was that like, your time there?

I loved it. I love Silverstone. I almost wish I was still there sometimes. In fact, we had Katie Tyler (Silverstone Press Officer) here yesterday. I just love Silverstone and it’s not just from my time there. It’s stems from the fact that going there was such a big treat as kids so it really does genuinely hold a really big place in my heart. I’ve always thought that’s where I’d like my ashes scattered, which is quite odd. To work at the home of the British Grand Prix, our home race, was such an amazing experience. I was gutted when I was made redundant. I thought my life was over because there was such a great team there.

I mentioned the underdog thing, well Silverstone as well is a bit of an underdog. It’s always having the shit kicked out of it for no apparent reason and again at the moment, it’s looking like it’s going through a sale and I ask myself is that the right thing? I worry about Silverstone, which I admit is quite odd. I still feel quite passionately about it and about its future and want to ensure that it stays on our Formula 1 calendar and we go racing there.

It gets one of the best crowds of the year.

It does. The passion of those fans, I love it. We stay in a hotel near the track where the fans camp out at the entrance to the hotel so when all of us are coming in, they’re there. Last year, I probably spent two hours every evening talking to all the fans outside. We had a couple of grandstands tickets left over from our allocation and we decided to organise a competition among the fans. There were probably about 70 people outside the hotel. We asked them to write why they should be given the tickets and doing that, being able to engage with your fans that closely is just a lovely thing to be able to do.

Those fans will be there again this year no doubt and, while the vast majority will want to see a British driver first past the flag, Messrs. Massa and Bottas can expect a huge level of support, simply because they drive for Williams.

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