After turning down an offer from Renault, Mark committed himself to Williams. What he didn’t know when he signed, however, was that BMW had already decided to leave Williams at the end of the year to form their own team.
“Flavio was pretty sure that it wouldn’t work out for me at Williams and he was right. I have a lot of respect for Frank (Williams) and Patrick (Head) is great company in a social environment, but this was the first part of Williams’ blip and, unfortunately, I was involved.
All the cars were very quick in ’05, with their V10 engines and tonnes of downforce, but the FW27 wasn’t quick enough. Too often I found myself having to punch a bit harder than I wanted to and points went missing as a result. I got my first podium at Monaco, but it was a disappointing day for me because I was good enough for second. I’d been the fastest Williams driver all weekend, but the team pitted Nick Heidfeld first, which gave him the overlap and he came home ahead of me.”
“Renault won the championship in ’05 and it was hard for me to watch Giancarlo Fisichella driving – and winning races in – what could have been my car. I had to live with my decision to go to Williams, and it was tough. No-one at Williams accepted that our car wasn’t competitive; they kept dreaming that we could get a result that wasn’t really there.”
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