Frank Williams founded Williams Grand Prix Engineering in 1977 after his previous operation, Frank Williams Racing Cars, had failed. The team was co-led by Patrick Head, who designed the cars. By 1982, Keke Rosberg had won the Drivers' Championship for Williams with a Ford-Cosworth engine, despite taking only one race win. Seeking a more powerful unit to compete with the turbocharged engines arriving in the sport, Frank Williams looked towards Honda, who were developing a turbocharged V6 engine in collaboration with Spirit.
A deal between Honda and Williams was settled early in 1983. For the 1983 season, Williams continued to use the Ford engine for all but the final race of the year in South Africa, where Rosberg finished fifth. Williams finished fourth in the Constructors' Championship that year with 36 points; Rosberg also won the Monaco Grand Prix that season.
For 1984 the team ran the FW09 with the Honda turbo engine. Rosberg won the Dallas Grand Prix and finished second at the opening race in Brazil. His new teammate Jacques Laffite scored five points, finishing fourteenth in the Drivers' Championship. Williams ended the season sixth in the Constructors' Championship with 25.5 points, Rosberg eighth in the Drivers' standings.
Head designed the FW10 for 1985, the team's first chassis to employ the carbon-fibre composite technology that McLaren had pioneered. Nigel Mansell replaced Laffite to partner Rosberg. The team scored four wins: Rosberg took the Detroit and Australian Grands Prix, Mansell won the European Grand Prix and the South African Grand Prix. Williams finished third in the Constructors' Championship with 71 points. During qualifying for the British Grand Prix, Rosberg set a lap averaging 160.938 mph (259.005 km/h), at that moment the fastest recorded lap in Formula One history.
From 1985, Williams ran the yellow, blue and white Canon livery.
In March 1986, Frank Williams was involved in a road accident returning to the airport at Nice after pre-season testing; he was left paralysed and did not return to the pit lane for almost a year. In his absence, the team won nine Grands Prix and the Constructors' Championship. Mansell came close to winning the Drivers' title, but his left-rear tyre failed at the Australian Grand Prix, the final race of the season. His teammate and championship rival Nelson Piquet made a precautionary pitstop shortly after Mansell's retirement. The title was thus taken by Alain Prost, who was in a slower car.
The 1987 season delivered the Williams-Honda partnership its only Drivers' Championship, won by Nelson Piquet with three victories and 73 points. Mansell was runner-up with six victories and 61 points. Williams won the Constructors' Championship for the second year in a row, scoring 137 points, 61 clear of nearest rivals McLaren.
Despite this success, Honda ended the partnership with Williams at the close of 1987, opting instead to supply McLaren.
Without a competitive engine deal available, Williams ran naturally aspirated Judd engines in 1988, incurring a significant performance deficit. Piquet departed to join Lotus, which had retained Honda engines. Williams finished seventh in the 1988 Constructors' Championship. The 1985 Silverstone qualifying lap record set by Rosberg in the Honda-powered FW10 stood until 2002, when Juan Pablo Montoya lapped Monza in qualifying at 161.449 mph (259.827 km/h) in the Williams FW24.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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