NOTICE OF DEATH - CYRIL 'CYD' WILLIAMS (1938 - 2024)
It is with great sadness that we advise Members of the death of ‘Cyd’ Williams on Sunday night 15 December. He was 86 years old and had been suffering from cancer for several years but only very recently had this prevented him from continuing to run his international car transportation business, deriving great pleasure from being entrusted with the high value cars which he carried for their owners around Europe.
Born in Penrhyn, North Wales Cyd served an apprenticeship with Ford main dealers in Manchester before obtaining employment as a mechanic at a garage near Oulton Park. By 1965, in his early 20s, Cyd had acquired his first race car, a Lotus Cortina Mk 1 with which he soon showed himself to be one of the quickest saloon car drivers in the north of England. He was invited to share a Lotus Cortina in the Spa 24 Hours with its owner Hugh Goodwin whose sister Natalie had been running her own team, Goodwin Racing, in Formula 3 for herself, John Cardwell and Alan Rollinson.
As the careers of John and Alan took them towards Formula 2, Formula 5000 and Formula 1 Natalie invited Cyd to join her team for 1968. To this point Cyd had had no experience of single-seaters but it only took a few races for him to settle in and become a front-runner against the likes of Tim Schenken, Tony Lanfranchi, Bev Bond and Mike Beuttler. By the middle of May Cyd was winning races in an extraordinary weekend when he won on the Saturday at Oulton Park before repeating the feat at Mallory Park the following day in the Goodwin Racing Brabham BT21. Another win later in the season plus a couple of seconds and thirds helped Cyd to finish third in the Lombank National Formula 3 Championship won by Tim Schenken.
For 1969 Goodwin Racing enabled Cyd and Natalie to race at events throughout Europe in addition to the British championships. The opposition comprised drivers from all over Europe, the USA and Australasia with their sights set on Formula 1. Some made it, most didn’t. The highlight of Cyd’s year was second place in the Grand Prix des Frontieres at Chimay, a very fast circuit requiring skill and bravery. Only Swiss driver Jean Blanc in a Tecno was ahead of Cyd at the flag. Cyd also finished second with the Goodwin Racing Chevron B9 in an early season race at Mallory Park to the Sports Motors Brabham BT28 of Tim Schenken. For the last year of 1-litre Formula 3 Cyd continued with Goodwin Racing with a best result of second place at Crystal Palace to Carlos Pace’s Lotus Type 69.
An invitation to take a Formula 2 Brabham BT30 to Bogota, Colombia was fruitless but on his return home Cyd was invited by Royale to drive its Formula Super Vee in a support race for the early season European Formula 2 race at Hockenheim which Cyd duly won much to the noisy irritation of the large crowd which regarded Super Vee as its own playground. The Royale progress continued with Cyd entered for a British Formula Atlantic Championship race under the DJ Bond banner which he won in a RP8. Fourth in the race was Graham Eden in a Chevron B18C. By the end of the month Cyd was at the wheel of Graham’s Chevron and by the end of the year, on the back of seven victories, Cyd was running Vern Schuppan’s Palliser very close for the Yellow Pages title.
The Cyd-Eden partnership continued through the 1972 season with a March 722 with which Cyd won 10 races to again finish a close runner-up this time to American Bill ‘Billy Bubblegum’ Gubelmann. A switch to a Brabham BT40 for 1973 did not produce any race wins and only a handful of visits to the podium. Indeed, the results which Cyd and Graham were able to achieve in the early days proved hard to replicate with only a few placings in the top three with the Brabham. A few races with the Sana RD11 in Formula Atlantic and Formula 5000 produced a best result of a fifth place at Brands Hatch after which Graham Eden pulled the plug on his team. Cyd went back to touring car racing, now with a Ford Escort RS2000 Mk 2 shared with the late Ken Coffey at Spa and a Volkswagen Scirocco with John Morris in the RAC Tourist Trophy at Silverstone in 1983.
A proud Welshman, Cyd invariably carried a red dragon motif on his cars. Always cheerful and chatty, Cyd was friendly with everyone. His track manners were impeccable although his nickname of ‘Tiger’ might suggest otherwise. He was not one of those drivers about whom others complained.
It was not until 1993, some 10 years after he had stopped racing, that at the instigation of John Morris, Cyd became a Full Member of the BRDC for which his Formula 3 and Formula Atlantic results had long before qualified him. He was a regular visitor to Silverstone and kept in touch with his friends from his time as one of the front runners among the so-called ‘Likely Lads’ of 1-litre Formula 3 and Formula Atlantic. To Cyd’s wife Lynn, sons Daniel, Paul and Jamie, stepchildren Danielle and James and their whole family the BRDC extends its deepest condolences. Funeral details will be notified to Members when known.
