Williams Heritage spent five months restoring the FW18 that Damon Hill drove to the 1996 championship, stripping chassis 4 down to bare carbon and repainting it for last month's Goodwood Festival of Speed. The car won 12 of 16 races that season, delivering both titles before Williams unceremoniously dropped Hill for Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Now 65, Hill called the reunion emotional — "It's very personal to me, that car" — and original mechanics from '96 helped oversee the rebuild. The team ran full NDT on the chassis, serviced the Renault V10, rebuilt the gearbox and hydraulics, and fitted a new fuel cell. Heritage Director Jonathan Kennard said the department pulled engineers' notes from the archive to answer period-correct questions. Hill's still quick: the FW18 "really goes and it really works," he said after sending it up Goodwood's hill. Williams Heritage is leaning into these reunions — Juan Pablo Montoya drove the 2004 FW26 two years ago — turning championship hardware into living nostalgia.
Read the full story at formula1.comHOW WILLIAMS REBUILT ONE OF THEIR MOST ICONIC F1 CARS
Williams Heritage spent five months restoring the FW18 that Damon Hill drove to the 1996 championship, stripping chassis 4 down to bare carbon and repainting it for last month's Goodwood Festival of Speed. The car won 12 of 16 races that season, delivering both titles before Williams unceremoniously dropped Hill for Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Now 65, Hill called the reunion emotional — "It's very personal to me, that car" — and original mechanics from '96 helped oversee the rebuild. The team ran full NDT on the chassis, serviced the Renault V10, rebuilt the gearbox and hydraulics, and fitted a new fuel cell. Heritage Director Jonathan Kennard said the department pulled engineers' notes from the archive to answer period-correct questions. Hill's still quick: the FW18 "really goes and it really works," he said after sending it up Goodwood's hill. Williams Heritage is leaning into these reunions — Juan Pablo Montoya drove the 2004 FW26 two years ago — turning championship hardware into living nostalgia.
