Patrick Head

Patrick Head was born into motor sport, his father Michael racing Jaguar sportscars in the 1950s, and was privately educated at Wellington College. After leaving school, Head joined the Royal Navy but soon realised that a career in the military was not how he wanted to spend his life and so left to attend university, first in Birmingham and later, after failing his first year exams, at UCL.

Head graduated in 1970 with a Mechanical Engineering degree, and immediately joined the chassis manufacturer Lola in Huntingdon. Here he formed a friendly relationship with John Barnard, whose Formula One designs for McLaren, Benetton and Ferrari would later go on to compete against Williams. Head was involved in a number of new projects all trying to become established as car builders or engineering companies and it was during this period that Head and Frank Williams met. Finally becoming disillusioned by his lack of success Head quit motor racing to work on building boats, but was lured back by Williams to join his team, which Head did during 1975.

In 1976, thirty-four-year-old Frank Williams decided that the time was right to re-form his own team and promptly set about luring Head back into Formula One. After one abortive attempt, on 8 February 1977 Williams Grand Prix Engineering was founded with Williams and Head taking seventy and thirty per cent of the company respectively. In 1977 the team raced a customer March chassis, but in 1978, with backing from Saudi Airlines and having signed Australian driver Alan Jones, the Head-designed FW06 made its first appearance. Despite having no money, and with Williams himself frequently forced to conduct business from a telephone box, Head still managed to design a respectable car.

The following season Williams scored 11 world championship points finishing 9th in the constructors' championship and from here momentum began to build. As early as the fourth round of the 1979 season Jones made the team's first visit to the podium. The same year saw a Head-designed car take the first of over one-hundred race wins when Swiss driver Clay Regazzoni won the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Four more victories followed in 1979 and Head was now an established Grand Prix car designer.