People

Peter Windsor

Born in Britain but brought up in Australia in the 1960s, Windsor became a passionate Formula 1 fan thanks to the annual Tasman Series races. In 1975 he returned to Britain to become a motorsport journalist and became a regular Formula 1 reporter and Sports Editor of the weekly magazine Autocar. In 1985, however, he was offered a job by Frank Williams and became manager of sponsorship and public affairs at Williams for the next four seasons.Windsor had ambitions of owning a team of his own and in league with the golfer Greg Norman he tried to buy the Brabham team in 1989. The sale ended up in the law courts with Windsor seeking damages after the sale fell through at the last minute. He was later awarded over $2m.During his time at Williams Windsor had become a close friend of driver Nigel Mansell and the connection proved to be useful when Windsor was appointed head of Ferrari's Guildford Technical Office in 1990. This organization had been set up by Ferrari in Britain to produce parts for the Italian team. In 1991 Mansell went back to Williams and Windsor soon followed, taking on the role of team manager.It was probably inevitable that when Mansell quit Williams at the end of 1992, having just won the World Championship, Windsor left as well and he went to live for a while in the United States of America, where Mansell was racing. The following year he began work to establish a new F1 team in partnership with Japanese Tetsu Ikuzawa but there was not enough money behind the project and so Windsor turned his attention to driver management and property. He looked after the career of rising Portuguese star Andre Couto, started writing again and did some TV work with Star TV in Hong Kong.At the start of 1998 Peter was offered a job as part of the Fox Television Formula 1 commentary team and so found himself back in the F1 press room 13 years after he left it.