Ask a new Formula 1 fan about Williams and he'll talk about midfield struggles. Ask a fan who started watching the sport in the 1980s or 1990s and you'll get a different response: Williams was probably the best run team on the grid.

Ferrari was nowhere. McLaren? It had some good spells in the late 1980s when the team had exclusive access to the Honda engine but the team never had the same periods of sustained dominance that Williams had.

Piquet and Mansell dominated F1 in the mid 1980s. Mansell, again, Hill and Villeneuve extended that dominance in to the 1990s. Only for a couple of barren years when McLaren were Honda powered did the Banbury-based team struggle.

However, in the late 1990s the foundations of the sport started to shift and Williams failed to follow.

The story begins in the early 1970s when teams like Brabham and Lotus (and Williams) were heavily innovating their way to championships. These teams constituted clever engineers and designers. The competition between these star engineers was fierce. The one with the best idea or best execution of the idea could easily find four or five seconds on the field.

In these days of yore teams often used to build their own engines — although some, like Ford, were an engine supplier. It was only in the late 1970s and early 1980s that many major car manufacturers started to pay serious attention to sport. To start with it their involvement was limited to supplying engines. BMW, Renault and Honda all saw success with this.

As the sport become more global we saw a move to manufacturer teams. Up to the mid 1990s Ferrari were the only manufacturer team. In 1995 Mercedes decided to get into bed with McLaren.

That agreement also started life as an engine-only deal but as the German marque bought Ilmor its intent became clear. There was little surprise a few years later when Mercedes decided to purchase shares in McLaren.

In the early 2000s Toyota decided to throw its hat into the ring and fund a team from scratch. As we all know it was a huge financial blunder. The Japanese team failed to make any inroads whatsoever despite having the deepest pockets in the sport.

However, that kick started the current trend of manufacturer teams. Mercedes upped its stake in McLaren. Renault swallowed Benetton and Honda subsumed BAR.

What became apparent was that the power and financial might of a manufacturer was required to make the extremely high investments required to stay at the peak of F1. It take $30m to build a wind tunnel &mdaah; and the biggest teams have two. Throw in $20m for a state of the art CFD computer and without even having designed a car you are a cool $50m in the red.

Why do the economics work for manufacturer backed teams and not for independent constructors?

Despite all the chatter about there being no link between road car development and F1, in the expensive engineering heavy disciplines there is a very important link.

Take wind tunnels and CFD. Both of these crucial race car tools play an important role in the development of road cars. In fact teams like Renault split their engineering programmes across the race and road team — budding engineers from the road division are seconded to F1 for a few years. This exposes them to a high technology, cutting edge environment, which does two things. One, in a world of high fuel efficiency these engineers understand how to deploy the technology available to them. Two, it also helps attract and retain good people — how cool is it to say you work in F1?

Okay, so what about Williams?

Back in the early 2000s Williams had an engine supply deal with BMW. In fact BMW were keen on buying Williams and ramping up investment in the team to compete with its arch rival, McLaren-Mercedes.

Frank Williams staunchly believed in the independence of his team so refused. While very principled it was also a little silly. Frank effectively misread the economic tea leaves in his industry. He shunned a massive investment to keep his team at the top for the sake of a bit of pride.

Now Williams has an engine supply deal with Toyota, which is also a constructor. In effect it is a customer and, as such, a second class citizen.

From this point forwards life for Williams will remain tough. Unless it can attract a car maker or a billionaire to invest money its prospects of moving up the grid remain low. Last year there was some chat of Toyota folding its factory team and buying Williams. However, based on results this year that plan is remote. The factory team is outperforming the customer team.

In a way that would have been a fine solution — Toyota's financial might combined with Williams' engineering prowess could have been a lethal combination. Now it appears the decline of a once great team will continue. Sad really.

Note: Just want to say sorry that articles have been slow for the last week or so. I've moved my family and life back from South Africa to the UK — the pace of life in England is far more hectic. And the summer break has meant that our other writers have been busy! Normal service should be resumed post Valencia. Happy racing.