Patrick Head on the Williams drivers

Patrick Head has a long history in motor sport, his father having raced in the 50s and passed the enthusiasm on to his son. After working with Lola, Ron Touranac and the Trojan F1 project, and then almost giving up a motor sport career, he joined Williams and has never looked back.
"There are alway times in Formula 1 when you think, why am I in this silly business, I should be doing something more sensible, but it's got a great fascination and is continually a chalenge. It doesn't matter whether you're on the top, or struggling around in the middle. You're always faced with challenges, technical and human. Because people change all the time, the make-up of the personalities you're working with the drivers personalities and types of ability are quite different. If you go stale on it, get out and do something else. If you're in F1, I don't care how bright you are or how gifted you may be, you have to do it 100%. If people are particularly good at it, if they drop off from doing it 100%, there will always be somebody to knock them off, but there's nothing worse than doing it at less your own ability."

Alan Jones
He loved beating other people. If you were somewhere on the first four rows of the grid, the whole team felt he was going to win the race. We've never had a driver here since who gave such a strong feeling of total confidence to the team. He was able, when he climbed out of the car, to spend a certain amount of time debriefing, and the completely switch away from motor racing, and from then on he was just full of humour. Some of that humour was pretty wicked.

Carlos Reutemann
A much more serious person, but certainly a driver I enjoyed working with. Very fast, but somehow in the time he was with us he didn't quite have the heart for racing the same way as Jones did. Very disciplined driver. Bit disappointing that we didn't win the Championship with him in 1981. Possibly a driver whose mental approach could be wavered quite strongly by the people he chose to have around him.

Keke Rosberg
A fantastic driver. Always on the limit in the car, very exciting to watch. Good sense of humour, but not too much if it was against himself, though. We managed to win a Championship with him in 1982, but it was very much on the back side of the normally aspirated era, and he left us while we were on the rise side of the 86-87 results.

Nigel Mansell
His intensity of effort in the car his total commitment to being fast, being competitive at all times was very impressive. Came to us with the reputation, perhaps, of being a journeyman driver, but it did become clear, I thing towards the end of 1985 and in early 86, that there was an awful lot of skill there as well.

Nelson Piquet
A great driver, great sense of humour, a bit on the wicked side at times. No doubt about it in my mind, Nelson can drive to the highest level, as fast as anyone on the circuit if he wants to, but is prepared to do so only in pockets where he in his mind decides that he is going to go to that level.