Motor racing giant and driving force behind a championship-winning Formula One team
Before the road accident that changed his life at the age of 43, Frank Williams typified the breed of fast-living, almost pathologically competitive alpha males who had graduated from the mostly amateur world of postwar British motor racing to dominate the sport at its highest level.
When Williams, who has died aged 79, lost the use of all four limbs after crashing a rental car while speeding from a circuit in southern France to a nearby airport one evening in the spring of 1986, his career as the driving force of a championship-winning Formula One team appeared to be over.