Williams had the chance to sign young British, Lewis Hamilton, back in 2004, when he was racing in formula three, but missed their chance because of their engine provider BMW. The co-founder of the team, Patrick Head, said that Hamilton visited them, during his formula three programme, after McLaren rejected him. "They rang up and said 'can we come and see you?'," Head said. "And they came in and said Ron Dennis has dropped us'".

"We were with BMW at the time and I think Frank rang Mario Theissen and said 'look, this guy looks as if he could be pretty good and whatever and he has come to us saying can we help him'.And I think Mario said they weren't prepared to provide any support and we weren't in a position financially where we could finance his racing. So much to Frank's annoyance, he could have had Lewis in a Williams."

Although Hamilton was only 19 years old at the time, he was good, but McLaren blocked his moving into GP2 and insisted he remains in formula three. Hamilton said in his autobiography about that, "This was not what I wanted...I eventually decided that I was prepared to give up my contract with McLaren rather than stay for another year." Head said that Williams would be in a much better position now if they had signed Hamilton when they had the chance but he also said, "There is no point in regretting. We've had various times where we could have had people in there but it's just water under the bridge," he said.