NOW THAT WAS A CAR No. 107

Almost 25 years have now passed since Williams last fielded a Formula 1 car worthy of winning a world championship. The sight of this team plying its trade at the tail of the field has become so commonplace that it’s almost strange to think of a time when the launch of a new Williams was a baton-passing exercise from one great car to another. As Jacques Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen unveiled the FW19 early in 1997, anything other than dominance of the season to come would have been faintly disappointing.

The roots of Williams’ last championship-winning car ran deep. The team had got its design mojo back in 1995 after a 1994 season rocked by troubles with the car – by his own admission, design guru Adrian Newey fumbled the transition from active to passive suspension – and by the tragic death of Ayrton Senna. With FW16’s aerodynamic instability problem solved, the Williams FW17, 18 and 19 followed an evolutionary path to greatness – albeit one overshadowed by the ongoing legal ramifications of Senna’s death.

Newey, though, had long since cleared his desk when the FW19 first turned a wheel. In the final