The Williams F1 car in Hungary everyone seems to have forgotten about
- Rebus T. Farkas
- Aug 1
- 9 min read
Do you know what Hell is?
Sit down, Jean-Paul Sartre; this was not a philosophical question. Hell™ is the market leader in Hungarian energy drinks and the reason behind this post. Like many other companies producing such beverages, Hell sought a partnership with an F1 team to promote its product, and between 2009 and 2010, its logo appeared on the side of Williams' rear wing.
Sometimes, F1 teams auction off their old cars. A rarely discussed and sad fact about these auctions is that these majestic machines often end up in the hands of rich people with more ego than driving talent, who then end up crashing them in amateur races. Fortunately, this didn't happen to the FW32. Instead, when it was up for sale in 2015, Hell decided to purchase the car featuring its logo and proudly exhibit it in a public garage for everyone to see.
This was a big thing for Hungarian F1 fans. They were used to a bunch of F1 cars coming to the country once a year, but they were always kept away from prying eyes and left after a couple of days... Interested fans had to travel far away to see an original F1 car. But not anymore. The FW32 was here for everyone to see. Countless articles and blog posts were published about the purchase, unveiling, people in attendance, etc., and then... well, you've read the title.
I became an F1 fan in 2020, when there were not many available sports, so I decided to watch a race. By then, I had been sleeping under my husband's Lewis Hamilton poster for almost six years, so I thought I'd check out what the fuss was all about. I quickly fell in love with the sport. I didn't just like it, I became obsessed with it: I read every post, watched every interview, tried to understand all the technical details - and yet, it took a year for me to find out about the Formula 1 car exhibited in my own country. Even then, it was ironic: there was a question on a Hungarian forum about whether there were other F1 cars here besides that Williams. (Negative, by the way - aside from Hungarian GP weekends, it's the only one.)
When I first heard about it, I didn't think much of it, because I assumed it was in some sort of office building somewhere where only Hell employees had access. It was only in 2023, when I became a Williams fan after they elected the best team principal of all time, that I remembered and decided to look into it. So, to summarise: by pure chance, I became a devoted fan of the one team that has a racecar in my country - which gave me an idea for our next bit brother-sister F1 adventure.
The journey
Before we could even plan our trip, I needed to make sure that it wouldn't be a fool's errand - that is, the car was still there. Like I said before, there has been no new information about the car since 2015, and a lot has happened since. For instance, the place that has the car in the garage has changed its name (not drastically: they went from Avalon Park to Avalon Resort & Spa). Kudos to the person who recently uploaded a picture of it to Google Maps, preventing me from having to pick up the phone and talk to a person.
In addition, I also had to figure out what to do once we're there. The reason behind this is that the place is more than 180 km away - or 2-2.5 hours in American, although Americans probably won't understand my problem. That sort of distance is at that uncomfortable time interval, where you can visit it in one day (which was my preference), but you don't just want to drive there, get out for two seconds and drive home. Lucky for me, the resort offers lots of activities: spa, fine dining, children's park, and even karting, which is the reason Hell chose to put the car here. We sorted out each other's preferences; we even took our father, who is not that much into motorsports but likes cars in general; one of us dressed up appropriately, and we went to see it.
As much as I advertised it as an "adventure", it's really just a car trip. The biggest excitement (other than seeing a real F1 car up close for the first time in my life) was making sure our (my father's) car had enough charge, which, when you think about it, is a very F1-related problem, except instead of fuel conservation, the driver (my brother) did the electric version. Additionally, in what I can only describe as the best omen I've ever gotten in my life, for some reason, the GPS diverted us from the fairly straightforward motorway, and we ended up at the motorway exit for the Hungaroring. I loved that coincidence - it was like a little nod from the universe: "Hey, I know you guys are having an F1-themed day and I made you a little treat".
Two hours later we arrived at the parking garage of Avalon Resort & Spa, where we almost immediately saw a race car - except, it was not the FW32 (yet): the BMW 3.0 CSL E9 Group 4 by Gabura Motorsport (nicknamed "Batmobile") is actually a recreation from 2018 of a real race car that won all touring car championships between 1975-1979. Now, as I am reading the information from the picture of an explanatory plaque I took while I was there (You didn't think I knew all this stuff from the top of my head, did you?) I find it pretty cool that they used a so-called scan model of the original chassis for this recreation, but to be honest, when I was standing there, I couldn't care less about this beauty - I ran off from my family to see the Williams.
You see, the two race cars are exhibited differently: the Batmobile, while separated with a plexiglass fence, is completely in the parking garage. On the other hand, the FW32 is visible from the garage through a glass wall/doors, but it is inside the building. (Sidenote: from an architectural point of view, this is the only place I've ever been where the parking garage isn't separated from the rest of the building with a depressing staircase, and it's awesome!) The F1 car has its own little showroom, with information panels all around the pillars, F1 art on the walls and some additional relics, like a spare piece of rear wing (actually it's from Nico Roseberg's 2009 car, but I'm applying some artistic freedom here) and Rubens Barrichello's helmet. I'm not a fan of the lighting, but we think that it's like this so that you would not be satisfied with the pictures and want to see it in person, and if that's the case, it worked on me.
There is a lot of information displayed, including size (5100 mm x 1800 mm x 1150 mm and I know it's a cliché thing to say about F1 cars, but it really is bigger in person than you'd expect), top speed (37 km/h), acceleration (2 seconds to 100 km/h) and a very confusing bit about who exactly drove it and when that I'm not writing here in case I got it wrong, but the important thing is that both Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hülkenberg were behind the wheel at some point of the 2010 season. Its best results are a P6 at the Hungaroring (all the more reason it should be in this country) and a pole position in Interlagos. A majestic car with a lot of history!
After taking all the pictures we could, we went inside the resort through a hallway that started from the showroom (I'm adding this bit mostly so that if you do decide to visit it, you wouldn't worry, like I did, about finding it - you really can't miss it) and continued with art celebrating motorsports. But if we thought we had seen all the racing-related relics, we were mistaken: at the end of the hallway on the top of the stairs, there was one more piece of motorsport history waiting for us - this time in the form of a bike.
The Mondial 175 OHC Monoalbero is a very unique looking (at least for me - perhaps it's a good time to mention how out of depth I am here) bike that helped its driver Carlo Ubbiali win one of his 9 (nine!) world championships in 1951. The exhibited vehicle also bears his signature, and at any other time in any other place, I'm sure it would have been the highlight of my day, but right there and then, it was overshadowed by the F1 car from my favourite team, driven by an F1 legend with 11 wins and a driver who has since got his first podium (finally!).
With that, we accomplished our main goal, and we could finally relax - luckily, we were at a wellness resort and spa, designed to do just that. We discussed earlier that since I like fine dining and this was technically a belated birthday trip for me, the "program" would be to eat a nice lunch at one of the resort's fine establishments. Lucky for me, gastronomy is one of their selling points; one of the restaurants even has a Michelin plate. Now, in case you don't know (like I didn't), the Michelin plate is a new award introduced in 2018 given out by Michelin to restaurants that are good but don't quite rise to Michelin star or Bib Gourmand level.
After finishing our meals, we found that description fitting: from my side, what I ate was an absolute masterpiece of a dish with an amazing mixture of flavours, but - even though I am a person who eats like seven times a day and therefore fills up very quickly - it left me hungry. From what I've heard from the others, their food was the other type of fine dining - in that "it was fine, I guess".
Before going home, we also checked out the karting place, and it looked really cool. I will say I have never done karting in my entire life, but I have seen other karting tracks before, and those didn't look as cool as this one. It's big, open, with lots of nice curves in its corners, and there is even a bridge, which I first thought was for spectators to be able to take better pictures, but no, it's part of the track! How cool is that? Again, I don't know how any of this translates to the enjoyment of the sport, but at least it looks really fun.
There are other activities around the resort - the children's adventure park intrigued my brother so much that he spent a considerable amount of time trying to come up with a way he could enter without a child -, but a lot of it was only open to guests. Overall, it appears to be a good place for a vacation, even if you're not interested in racing (although in that case, I'm not sure what you're doing on my blog), and I'm very happy that we got to visit.
Other F1 cars in Hungary
Originally, I wrote this post for people who might come to this country for the Hungarian GP, and I planned to publish it before the race weekend, but life, as well as two separate instances of accidentally losing large chunks of text that I then had to rewrite, got in the way. To be honest, the delay is probably not as big of a deal as I imagined when I first planned to bring the attention of people who visit this country for a Grand Prix to this forgotten piece of F1 history. I mean, who would take 5 hours of their day just so they can look at this one F1 car for 10 minutes (besides me)? Instead, let me add another paragraph, containing F1-related sights in Budapest you can visit this weekend, even if you plan to spend most of your day at the track.
There's an official McLaren showcar in Akvárium Klub, the actual Ferrari F1 car from last year in Westend, and if you haven't read my thread on Bluesky about the LEGO x F1 event in Allee Arena, let me tell you, the LEGO Mercedes F1 car George drove in the Miami race is just one of the cool things you can find there. In addition, at Margit sziget - the island in the heart of Budapest, which you may know because many F1 personalities (as well as my high school biology teacher) have said they start their days running laps around it - there is a fountain that plays music, which is cool in itself, but in celebration of the 40th Hungarian Grand Prix, they also added a light show where they project the most iconinc moments from the Hungaroring using the fountain's vapour as a canvas.
Other than that, if you are going to the Hungarian GP, I really think you could benefit from reading my blog post, which contains my advice as well as some of my experiences from last year. I know what you're thinking - this is just a shameless plug to get more visibility - but you're wrong. When I first wrote it, people found it useful, and it was actually a reader who suggested I share a link to it before the next one. The plug is what comes right now! - Because if you like F1, or Williams, or James Vowles, please, check out my other posts to see if you find something interesting/useful! Thank you!
Finally, whether you follow this race weekend from the track, on TV, or not at all because you're busy, I wish you the best time!
Rebus T. Farkas
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