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Espace F1 Minivan!
- Thread starter JoeBlo1
- Start date
The_Finn
Well-Known Member
it's also at supercars.net with the specs they give it i really have to wonder how useful it is.... i bet it's just a carbonfibr shell that looks like a minivan
TF
TF
Wow, that is old. Yeah, Williams got renault to fit the F1 engine to a new chassis and then they put a fibreglass/carbon fibre body in it. It really isn't related to the Espace at all. They also did it so Frank Williams was able to experience what a F1 engine was actually like since his accident.
Roman
Resident Skydiver
Thanks for this video JoeBlo1.
I had never seen the Espace F1 roll before.
I normally drive it and have no time to watch it go around the circuit.
I have to say it is without a doubt my favorite vehicle to drive...
in Gran Turismo 2.
I used to call it my butter brick (livre de beurre) because of the shape and color of it.
I really liked driving that thing. *dusts off GT2*
I had never seen the Espace F1 roll before.
I normally drive it and have no time to watch it go around the circuit.
I have to say it is without a doubt my favorite vehicle to drive...
in Gran Turismo 2.
I used to call it my butter brick (livre de beurre) because of the shape and color of it.
I really liked driving that thing.
*dusts off GT2*
He was travelling in a Porsche 928 with F1 journalist Peter Windsor when it went off the road. Don't know the details exactly. I know that Windsor wrote an article in F1 Racing magazine about the whole event. A pretty moving read if you can get your hands on it.
Not exactly the article, but an article about it.
FRANK WILLIAMS: DRIVEN
As Frank Williams awoke from his English bed on Saturday, 8 March, 1986, he had it all. Bedside alarm buzzing at 5.30am, the boss and owner of the highly successful Williams Grand Prix Engineering outfit was off to join the F1 team that bore his name in southern France; the new FW11 pounding in the testing miles at the Paul Ricard circuit.
Like similar climate-sanctuaries in South Africa and Spain, Williams enjoyed the predictable, mild Riviera sunshine over the often dank Northamptonshire rain, hail and fog which so often hampers testing progress. Unlike most team bosses, however, Frank relished the opportunity to see his Formula 1 cars in testing action; he hardly missed a lap, wherever in the world. In the pre-season of 1986, just two weeks before the season would kick off in Brazil, Frank Williams kissed his wife on the cheek and closed the front door to his new Boxford mansion.
Virginia, Williams? wife, will never forget preparing pasta tagliatelle for Frank and the children that evening. "At about five o'clock", she remembers, "the phone rang and I walked into the kitchen to answer it".
"Hi! It's me" said a cheerful Frank Williams. "I'm just leaving the circuit. I'll be home in a couple of hours - I hope you've got pasta for supper. Great. OK. Lots of love".
Frank Williams, a remarkably fit man, was rushing home to compete in a half-marathon the following day; hence the high-carbohydrate pasta meal ? and a couple of bowls of cornflakes ? the night before. In the mid-eighties, Frank Williams ran at least 70 miles a week, competing in a half-marathon every fortnight or so. Next to F1 racing, remembers Virginia, jogging had become his biggest obsession.
"Frank has always had an intensely competitive nature and thrives on working towards self-imposed targets. Running provided all sorts of rewards for that side of his personality. He loved it".
Frank Williams, who first made a team-ownership F1 appearance in 1969, was desperate to reclaim the glory days of the early-eighties when Alan Jones and Keke Rosberg became the first Williams world champions. The FW11, to be piloted by Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet, looked capable of powering once again to the highest step of the podium. Frank Williams, sensing the competitiveness of his latest racer, was suitably excited about his team?s prospects.
45 minutes after the call from Frank, the phone rang again. It was Peter Windsor, the then Williams press officer.
"Ginny? I'm ringing from Nelson Piquet's car phone. Listen, we've had a bit of an accident but there's no need to worry. Frank's OK. I was in the car with him".
Frank Williams was a renowned ?wild-man? behind the wheel of a road car; a frustrated racing-driver trapped in the body of a mere motoring mediocre. As such, Virginia hardly reacted. Between Frank and Patrick Head, Williams? talented technical director and partner, the pair had written off more road cars than Ginny had prepared high-carb Pasta dinners.
"At the time" reflected Virginia, "I recalled a few years earlier when Frank and ex-F1 driver Jacques Laffite walked into the house with bleeding heads - and Jacques, not the most easily frightened of racing drivers, declaring, 'Fucking awful driver! I'll never drive anywhere with him again?".
Patrick Head rushed to Boxford to break the yet scant news from France. Three miles from Paul Ricard, Frank Williams had lost control of his hire car ? a Ford Sierra ? at high-speed, rolling down a gully, somersaulting several times, and landing wheels-up in a bare field. The roof had caved in on Frank?s head and Peter Windsor, sensing leaking petrol fumes, promptly smashed the rear window with a boulder and dragged the clearly injured Williams over the back-seats and clear of the wreck.
Formula 1?s travelling neurosurgeon, Professor Sid Watkins, who was busy testing a new Porsche 928 in England, was alerted to the news by Bernie Ecclestone. Ecclestone, Formula 1?s ringmaster, briefed Watkins on the slowly developing news from France; Frank had been involved in a car accident, might have damaged his neck, and had been taken to the local Toulon hospital just outside of Le Castellet. Watkins immediately initiated arrangements to have Frank transferred to the Marseille Hospital Timone, where a renowned neurosurgical unit prepared for immediate surgery.
When Watkins arrived at Timone, Williams drivers Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet greeted the well-liked ?racing-doctor? with grave consternation. Discovering Frank already in surgery, Watkins quickly changed into surgical attire and walked into the operating theatre where Dr. Vincentelli was incising the rear of Williams? clearly broken neck. Next stop was the head and neck x-rays. Professor Sid Watkins? worst fears were graphically illuminated on the theatre-wall.
"There was a complete dislocation at C6-C7 - the sixth cervical vertebra on the seventh - with gross reduction of the diameter of the spinal canal. It seemed highly likely that the spinal cord had been irretrievably damaged and one could only hope for the best".
Watkins immediately thought of Clay Regazzoni, a Formula 1 driver who emerged partially paralysed after spinal-cord damage sustained in an accident during the Grand Prix of Long Beach in 1980. He dismissed the thought almost as instantly as it had invaded his mind. ?I will not allow Frank Williams to end up in a wheelchair?, he promised himself.
"Dr Vincentelli and his team were performing a posterior open reduction of the fracture, and then a similar procedure from the front of the neck to provide stability to the fracture with a bone graft and metal plate. We then send him for a CT scan to ensure no brain damage had been sustained".
Professor Vincintelli emerged from a tortuously long operation on the Williams chief. Part of Frank?s hip-bone had been removed and used to fuse the broken vertebrae in his neck. Virginia Williams stared into Vincintelli?s eyes with a bleary dread, scarcely prepared for the answer to her next question.
"Is he paralysed?" came the strained words. Professor Vinceintelli nodded.
Frank Williams, arguably the most driven, healthy, robust, contented and passionate man in the Formula 1 paddock, lay a wreck amid blips of hospital machinery. Five drips pumped vital liquids to his haggard body, while five tubes emptied dark fluids into bags beneath the bed.
Virginia Williams, scarcely able to recognise the man who had skipped off to Paul Ricard the day before, remembers the moment she clapped eyes on her husband in hospital.
"His hair was matted with dried blood, the inside of his ears and nostrils encrusted with it. Even his fingernails were black with blood. His face was bruised, cut, and horribly swollen, his forehead covered in stitches. His body, which only yesterday had been fit and lean, was distended to horrendous proportions.
"At every rasping breath his lower abdomen heaved up and down with effort. A long, livid, freshly-stitched incision ran across the front of his neck. His eyes were closed. I wanted to speak to him but found that I was unable to open my mouth. It was as though I were paralysed myself. Behind me I was aware of Patrick staring down in shocked silence".
Once Sid Watkins was satisfied of the stability of Frank?s condition, the patient was transferred to the London Hospital ICU where further treatment would be necessary. Wary of the risk of chest complications and further spinal cord deterioration, the Professor decided upon two further operations; a mini-tracheotomy and a myelogram.
Watkins remembers, "we were very worried that Frank would get a chest infection, and I was anxious that if this happened he should not have a formal tracheotomy because of the risks involved. I did not want Frank to have to be ventilated with a machine at any stage, because sometimes, once this happens, it is not possible ever to wean the patient off the ventilator.
"We performed a mini-tracheotomy, which unlike tracheotomy, preserves the capability of the patient to speak, and can control the chest infection by allowing suction of the secretions from the lungs and bronchi. This worked very well and obviated any need for mechanical ventilation".
Sid Watkins has since paid tribute to Frank Williams as a patient; from the very first admittance to hospital, to the last painful procedure, Frank was unceasingly cheerful and constantly thanking those who attended to his needs. The myelogram, which involves inserting a long spinal needle into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord, has to be done with very little local anaesthetic; which Watkin?s refers to as "one of the most painful and distressing medical procedures for a patient".
Frank Williams is paralysed from the shoulders down, although some arm movement has since returned. Confined to a wheelchair, today?s remnants of the injuries sustained include a difficulty in respiration and speech. Pre-1986, Frank Williams was as disciplined in his fitness and health as any man in Formula 1; including the drivers, who obsess themselves with the task of achieving a fitness-edge over his rivals. As we speak, the BMW.WilliamsF1 team principle is as disciplined and motivated in his personal well-being and fitness as he ever was, following strict physiotherapy regimes, controlling blood pressure and diet, and attempting to regain control over those activities which now must be attended to by a full-time medical staff.
And all the while, remember, whilst simultaneously leading arguably the most successful modern Formula 1 team in motorsporting history. Incidentally, Nelson Piquet drove an inspiring Grand Prix to win the first round of the 1986 championship in the nimble Williams-Honda FW11; the package going on to win eight further races in a title bid which eluded the Didcot team by two points.
Fast-forward to 1994, the year Ayrton Senna was killed at the wheel of a Williams-Renault; Damon Hill, having won the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago, has just qualified on the second row for tomorrow?s Canadian race, and Frank Williams requests the presence of Professor Sid Watkins in the team garage.
Fearing a medical need, Watkins double-times the walk from the Montreal lagoon boardwalk to the rear entrance of the Williams pit.
"What?s up, Frank?"
"I've never thanked you, Prof, for saving my life all those years ago but I'd like to do so now" came the unexpected gratitude.
"That's OK, Frank".
In 1999, the Queen?s New Years Honours recognised a humble Englishman for his services to British motor-sport. Sir Francis Williams.
"I was very unsuccessful and dangerous in racing cars, so eventually after making some money I was persuaded by Piers Courage to buy a car for him. After that, I was an F1 entrant and no longer a ridiculously bad racing driver".
And, on that fateful day near Paul Ricard in 1986, Frank Williams is able to reflect on his injuries in the candidly witty, cheerful and honest manner as we have grown to expect from the incredible man behind the Williams Grand Prix team.
"The first thing is that the accident was totally my fault. It was just the inevitable result of 27 years of hooligan driving ? and probably a Godsend for other road-users". The great man smiles, and continues.
"But essentially I?m so well looked after by the people who help me on a day-to-day basis that I don?t really notice the fact that I have physical limitations. I?ve just got other things on my mind.
"I?m very fortunate".
FRANK WILLIAMS: DRIVEN
As Frank Williams awoke from his English bed on Saturday, 8 March, 1986, he had it all. Bedside alarm buzzing at 5.30am, the boss and owner of the highly successful Williams Grand Prix Engineering outfit was off to join the F1 team that bore his name in southern France; the new FW11 pounding in the testing miles at the Paul Ricard circuit.
Like similar climate-sanctuaries in South Africa and Spain, Williams enjoyed the predictable, mild Riviera sunshine over the often dank Northamptonshire rain, hail and fog which so often hampers testing progress. Unlike most team bosses, however, Frank relished the opportunity to see his Formula 1 cars in testing action; he hardly missed a lap, wherever in the world. In the pre-season of 1986, just two weeks before the season would kick off in Brazil, Frank Williams kissed his wife on the cheek and closed the front door to his new Boxford mansion.
Virginia, Williams? wife, will never forget preparing pasta tagliatelle for Frank and the children that evening. "At about five o'clock", she remembers, "the phone rang and I walked into the kitchen to answer it".
"Hi! It's me" said a cheerful Frank Williams. "I'm just leaving the circuit. I'll be home in a couple of hours - I hope you've got pasta for supper. Great. OK. Lots of love".
Frank Williams, a remarkably fit man, was rushing home to compete in a half-marathon the following day; hence the high-carbohydrate pasta meal ? and a couple of bowls of cornflakes ? the night before. In the mid-eighties, Frank Williams ran at least 70 miles a week, competing in a half-marathon every fortnight or so. Next to F1 racing, remembers Virginia, jogging had become his biggest obsession.
"Frank has always had an intensely competitive nature and thrives on working towards self-imposed targets. Running provided all sorts of rewards for that side of his personality. He loved it".
Frank Williams, who first made a team-ownership F1 appearance in 1969, was desperate to reclaim the glory days of the early-eighties when Alan Jones and Keke Rosberg became the first Williams world champions. The FW11, to be piloted by Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet, looked capable of powering once again to the highest step of the podium. Frank Williams, sensing the competitiveness of his latest racer, was suitably excited about his team?s prospects.
45 minutes after the call from Frank, the phone rang again. It was Peter Windsor, the then Williams press officer.
"Ginny? I'm ringing from Nelson Piquet's car phone. Listen, we've had a bit of an accident but there's no need to worry. Frank's OK. I was in the car with him".
Frank Williams was a renowned ?wild-man? behind the wheel of a road car; a frustrated racing-driver trapped in the body of a mere motoring mediocre. As such, Virginia hardly reacted. Between Frank and Patrick Head, Williams? talented technical director and partner, the pair had written off more road cars than Ginny had prepared high-carb Pasta dinners.
"At the time" reflected Virginia, "I recalled a few years earlier when Frank and ex-F1 driver Jacques Laffite walked into the house with bleeding heads - and Jacques, not the most easily frightened of racing drivers, declaring, 'Fucking awful driver! I'll never drive anywhere with him again?".
Patrick Head rushed to Boxford to break the yet scant news from France. Three miles from Paul Ricard, Frank Williams had lost control of his hire car ? a Ford Sierra ? at high-speed, rolling down a gully, somersaulting several times, and landing wheels-up in a bare field. The roof had caved in on Frank?s head and Peter Windsor, sensing leaking petrol fumes, promptly smashed the rear window with a boulder and dragged the clearly injured Williams over the back-seats and clear of the wreck.
Formula 1?s travelling neurosurgeon, Professor Sid Watkins, who was busy testing a new Porsche 928 in England, was alerted to the news by Bernie Ecclestone. Ecclestone, Formula 1?s ringmaster, briefed Watkins on the slowly developing news from France; Frank had been involved in a car accident, might have damaged his neck, and had been taken to the local Toulon hospital just outside of Le Castellet. Watkins immediately initiated arrangements to have Frank transferred to the Marseille Hospital Timone, where a renowned neurosurgical unit prepared for immediate surgery.
When Watkins arrived at Timone, Williams drivers Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet greeted the well-liked ?racing-doctor? with grave consternation. Discovering Frank already in surgery, Watkins quickly changed into surgical attire and walked into the operating theatre where Dr. Vincentelli was incising the rear of Williams? clearly broken neck. Next stop was the head and neck x-rays. Professor Sid Watkins? worst fears were graphically illuminated on the theatre-wall.
"There was a complete dislocation at C6-C7 - the sixth cervical vertebra on the seventh - with gross reduction of the diameter of the spinal canal. It seemed highly likely that the spinal cord had been irretrievably damaged and one could only hope for the best".
Watkins immediately thought of Clay Regazzoni, a Formula 1 driver who emerged partially paralysed after spinal-cord damage sustained in an accident during the Grand Prix of Long Beach in 1980. He dismissed the thought almost as instantly as it had invaded his mind. ?I will not allow Frank Williams to end up in a wheelchair?, he promised himself.
"Dr Vincentelli and his team were performing a posterior open reduction of the fracture, and then a similar procedure from the front of the neck to provide stability to the fracture with a bone graft and metal plate. We then send him for a CT scan to ensure no brain damage had been sustained".
Professor Vincintelli emerged from a tortuously long operation on the Williams chief. Part of Frank?s hip-bone had been removed and used to fuse the broken vertebrae in his neck. Virginia Williams stared into Vincintelli?s eyes with a bleary dread, scarcely prepared for the answer to her next question.
"Is he paralysed?" came the strained words. Professor Vinceintelli nodded.
Frank Williams, arguably the most driven, healthy, robust, contented and passionate man in the Formula 1 paddock, lay a wreck amid blips of hospital machinery. Five drips pumped vital liquids to his haggard body, while five tubes emptied dark fluids into bags beneath the bed.
Virginia Williams, scarcely able to recognise the man who had skipped off to Paul Ricard the day before, remembers the moment she clapped eyes on her husband in hospital.
"His hair was matted with dried blood, the inside of his ears and nostrils encrusted with it. Even his fingernails were black with blood. His face was bruised, cut, and horribly swollen, his forehead covered in stitches. His body, which only yesterday had been fit and lean, was distended to horrendous proportions.
"At every rasping breath his lower abdomen heaved up and down with effort. A long, livid, freshly-stitched incision ran across the front of his neck. His eyes were closed. I wanted to speak to him but found that I was unable to open my mouth. It was as though I were paralysed myself. Behind me I was aware of Patrick staring down in shocked silence".
Once Sid Watkins was satisfied of the stability of Frank?s condition, the patient was transferred to the London Hospital ICU where further treatment would be necessary. Wary of the risk of chest complications and further spinal cord deterioration, the Professor decided upon two further operations; a mini-tracheotomy and a myelogram.
Watkins remembers, "we were very worried that Frank would get a chest infection, and I was anxious that if this happened he should not have a formal tracheotomy because of the risks involved. I did not want Frank to have to be ventilated with a machine at any stage, because sometimes, once this happens, it is not possible ever to wean the patient off the ventilator.
"We performed a mini-tracheotomy, which unlike tracheotomy, preserves the capability of the patient to speak, and can control the chest infection by allowing suction of the secretions from the lungs and bronchi. This worked very well and obviated any need for mechanical ventilation".
Sid Watkins has since paid tribute to Frank Williams as a patient; from the very first admittance to hospital, to the last painful procedure, Frank was unceasingly cheerful and constantly thanking those who attended to his needs. The myelogram, which involves inserting a long spinal needle into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord, has to be done with very little local anaesthetic; which Watkin?s refers to as "one of the most painful and distressing medical procedures for a patient".
Frank Williams is paralysed from the shoulders down, although some arm movement has since returned. Confined to a wheelchair, today?s remnants of the injuries sustained include a difficulty in respiration and speech. Pre-1986, Frank Williams was as disciplined in his fitness and health as any man in Formula 1; including the drivers, who obsess themselves with the task of achieving a fitness-edge over his rivals. As we speak, the BMW.WilliamsF1 team principle is as disciplined and motivated in his personal well-being and fitness as he ever was, following strict physiotherapy regimes, controlling blood pressure and diet, and attempting to regain control over those activities which now must be attended to by a full-time medical staff.
And all the while, remember, whilst simultaneously leading arguably the most successful modern Formula 1 team in motorsporting history. Incidentally, Nelson Piquet drove an inspiring Grand Prix to win the first round of the 1986 championship in the nimble Williams-Honda FW11; the package going on to win eight further races in a title bid which eluded the Didcot team by two points.
Fast-forward to 1994, the year Ayrton Senna was killed at the wheel of a Williams-Renault; Damon Hill, having won the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago, has just qualified on the second row for tomorrow?s Canadian race, and Frank Williams requests the presence of Professor Sid Watkins in the team garage.
Fearing a medical need, Watkins double-times the walk from the Montreal lagoon boardwalk to the rear entrance of the Williams pit.
"What?s up, Frank?"
"I've never thanked you, Prof, for saving my life all those years ago but I'd like to do so now" came the unexpected gratitude.
"That's OK, Frank".
In 1999, the Queen?s New Years Honours recognised a humble Englishman for his services to British motor-sport. Sir Francis Williams.
"I was very unsuccessful and dangerous in racing cars, so eventually after making some money I was persuaded by Piers Courage to buy a car for him. After that, I was an F1 entrant and no longer a ridiculously bad racing driver".
And, on that fateful day near Paul Ricard in 1986, Frank Williams is able to reflect on his injuries in the candidly witty, cheerful and honest manner as we have grown to expect from the incredible man behind the Williams Grand Prix team.
"The first thing is that the accident was totally my fault. It was just the inevitable result of 27 years of hooligan driving ? and probably a Godsend for other road-users". The great man smiles, and continues.
"But essentially I?m so well looked after by the people who help me on a day-to-day basis that I don?t really notice the fact that I have physical limitations. I?ve just got other things on my mind.
"I?m very fortunate".
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Damn, they should put F1 engines in more stuff.
