With social media you now quite regularly see teams having some light-hearted fun with or little digs at each other.
I'm however wondering what stories you know like the following one that I learned of on Autosport's "Secrets and History of the Williams F1 Legend" podcast (part 3). In this, Jonathan Williams tells the following anecdote about William's split with BMW:
In 2005, on the way home after the Hungary GP Sam Michael called my father [Frank] on his car phone saying "Well Frank, you've wound him [Mario Theissen) up. That's a big wind up you've done there. He's gone absolutely nuts, going around saying how can you do this to me and stuff."
What happened was that - while BMW had already told they were leaving [Williams after the 2005 season] - there was apparently a clause in the contract saying that if BMW choose to end the works partnership early but continued to be in F1, they're obliged to offer Williams a customer supply of engines.
But at the time BMW was tooling up to go from V10's to V8's and therefore they had no intention to go to the time or expenditure to supply two teams in year 1 of the V8 era. So what they offered Williams was the most ludicrous contract for the engine leash that you could ever imagine.
So my dad [Frank] said "Two can play that game. I'm going to accept it. Just to wind them up. And then a week later I'm gonna make some excuse about having a better option."
After the meeting in Hungary between Frank and Mario, in which Frank has told Mario they accepted the engine leash offer, in the car on their way home Jonathan asks his father "What have you done?".
Dad [Frank] replies that "He [Mario] just needs to learn a lesson. I'm just gonna let him dwell in his own misery for a week and then I'll tell him.".
It was essentially you take the piss out of us, we'll take the piss about you.
We can accept you're leaving, we haven't done a good enough job, we would probably leave as well, but we've gone through a lot together, we've achieved a lot together, we've won Le Mans, the Monaco GP, we've fought for championships...
Mario Theissen then straight after that meeting let Sam Michael have it saying "This is unacceptable, we cannot do this!! How can you sign this contract?!".
With Sam simply replying "It's what you offered us, Mario."
"But it's impossible to make this work. My board will be furious."
"Well though, tell them to make more engines."
Edited by JL14, 01 February 2025 - 20:23.
