Master of the house
Williams likes to keep its past tidily separated from its present. Past glories – plus a few historic mis-steps – live in the Conference Centre, a short walk from the bustling hive of industry that is the Formula 1 facility. Once a factory itself, home to the touring car and sportscar programmes of the late 1990s, it now serves as a peaceful repose for engineering marvels, including a Le Mans 24 Hours winner as well as several championship-winning F1 cars.
The exhibit George Russell makes a beeline for, though, contains a spread of close-but-no-cigar machinery from the early 2000s, a period of hairy-chested V10-powered ground-pounders tamed only occasionally by traction control. Guided by Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher, the Williams-BMWs of the day came up short against the might of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari. While the racing was one-sided, several lap records still stand from 2004, the peak of the screaming V10 era. Like most drivers of his age, Russell regards Michael as indubitably the
