F1 ‘90s revival: why we could see McLaren and Williams back in a championship duel

Even when McLaren and Williams were vying for which could dominate F1 back in the 1990s, Williams was a less structured place, much more of an artisan workshop than the shiny, super-organised scientific and technical powerhouse of McLaren. Back then, an F1 team was small enough that a strong technical director such as Patrick Head at Williams could still wrap their arms around the whole project. But the size and resource of a top F1 team was becoming bigger and McLaren’s Ron Dennis had led that transition. It was up to the others to keep up – and Williams failed to do so.

For as long as Williams had the creative force of Adrian Newey on board, it had been able to balance the scales to McLaren’s greater resource and structure. But when Dennis scored the double hit of depriving Williams of Newey and adding him to McLaren’s strength, there was no longer a contest. Couple that with the fact Williams had lost its cutting-edge engine partner Renault, which was no longer nationalised and was prioritising the shareholders’ interests over technical progress. This happened just as Dennis had snared Mercedes as McLaren’s partner.

The scales flipped during the 1997-98 off-season. Top in 1997, a Newey-less, customer-engined Williams withered into insignificance in ’98 as a Newey-driven, Mercedes-powered McLaren team began its third era of dominance under Dennis’s stewardship (following the TAG years of 1984-85 and the Honda era of 1988-91). The gaps between those McLaren eras were filled by the pre-eminence of Williams (the 1986-87 Williams-Honda years and the 1992-97 Williams-Renault era).

But that alternating current of excellence between these two teams which had accounted for 15 years of F1’s history ended as Williams dwindled ever-further, increasingly outmoded and without a succession plan. Meanwhile the giant of Ferrari was being awoken by Messrs Brawn, Todt, Schumacher and Byrne. In time that giant would overpower even McLaren, with not a little help from the acrimonious relationship between Dennis and FIA president Max Mosley – and from Newey tiring of Dennis’s control over him.

As new powerhouses emerged amid the volatility, McLaren lost its Mercedes partnership and Dennis lost control of his team. No Newey, no works Mercedes partnership, no Dennis, McLaren was on a slide seemingly just as certain as that suffered by Williams. By the end of 2018, it was a point of debate which was the slowest car on the F1 grid: Williams or McLaren?

That was rock bottom for McLaren and almost from that moment, under Zak Brown’s stewardship and increasingly guided by Andrea Stella’s judgement, the recovery was underway. The constructors’ championship in 2024 was its first for 26 years. Such a thing would have seemed unthinkable in 2018. Yet it was achieved with many of the same people there as in ’18.

For Williams, 2018 wasn’t quite rock bottom. There was a little further to fall, a new ownership and a couple of management changes still to come. But new owners Dorilton steadied the ship after a false start by installing James Vowles as team principal and he in turn brought in the experienced technical hand of Pat Fry. Many of the team’s outmoded systems and processes were replaced in ’23 and that transition had the run-on of making last year’s car late and overweight, so disguising the progress being made behind the scenes. Meanwhile, a quiet revolution has been unfolding there, with a big recruitment drive taking the team to 1050 people and an investment in new facilities coming on line.

Among Vowles’ key recruitments is the new head of aero Adam Kenyon, described by Vowles from their time together at Mercedes as “extraordinary”. Reporting to Kenyon is the chief aerodynamicist Juan Molina who has three Red Bull titles under his belt.

“McLaren is the pre-season favourite for the first time in decades”

As we head into ’25 McLaren is the pre-season favourite for the first time in decades. It’s a status which Stella accepts, albeit with appropriate caution. “You need to have a mindset associated to dealing with missed opportunities,” he says, “[Which] can be painful in the short term or in the moment, because it means that you might have lost some points or you might have lost a possible victory. But it’s a great opportunity to improve… a lot of my efforts have gone into establishing this kind of mindset… There’s a lot to consolidate even when things go well. You do have to understand why things have gone well, rather than simply think, ‘That’s because I’m good.’ Well, you better check exactly why things went well.”

He’s cautiously looking forward to having the problem of both his drivers shooting for the world title. It’s been quite a turnaround. Is it realistic to believe Williams could emulate that journey? Vowles believes so, saying at the launch of the new FW47, “Every area I look at on the car is just a world of difference from where we were. We’re not finished on our journey, and I’m not standing on our soapbox saying that we’re benchmarks – but we’re on the right pathway to getting back there…. You’re going to see us progress forwards but what I’ve always said is we’ve put our focus into 2026, ’27 and ’28. There’s a lot more in the pipeline. We’re here to make sure we’re back to winning championships. To do that it will take more time but that’s the investment we’re doing.”

Might there come a time – decades after it last happened – when McLaren and Williams again vie for supremacy?

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