On the track, the Williams Formula One team are attempting to revive former glories through their talented driving team of Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz and the team principal, James Vowles.
Away from the track, the team and their parent company, Dorilton, are embroiled in a messy dispute with a former executive, Claudia Schwarz, who was dismissed in 2022. In court filings she alleges she was fired after raising concerns about sexism towards her and racism, with claims drawing in Lewis Hamilton’s foundation and the artists Wyclef Jean and Shaggy. The ultimate ownership of the Williams team is also questioned by the former executive, who makes a hotly contested claim that the team are controlled by Peter de Putron, a billionaire based in Jersey with close links to the Conservative party.
They in turn accuse the executive of fiddling her expenses, charging inflated fees, and defrauding the company in cahoots with a former CEO of Williams’s parent company.
Schwarz was fired as Williams’s chief marketing officer in November 2022. According to Schwarz, who is sharing her side of the story for the first time with the Guardian, no reason was given for her dismissal at the time. She says she agreed to a severance package shortly after that, which was never fulfilled, and a few months later she sued for breach of contract.
In May 2023, a problematic HR dispute went nuclear. Dorilton filed a lawsuit in New York claiming Schwarz illicitly took $6.9m in expenses and inflated fees, and that Darren Fultz, CEO of the race team’s holding company, looked the other way on the alleged fraud. These were costs such as flight and hotel reservations, and fees she billed Dorilton for services provided by her own agency, Stilus. According to Dorilton’s lawsuit, there was an “inappropriate relationship” between Schwarz and Fultz. Fultz and Schwarz deny these claims, Schwarz arguing he wasn’t even her boss at the time. Schwarz also denies the fraud allegations, pointing out the charge emerged only after she sued for breach of contract.
A few months after Dorilton sued her, the UK-based Business F1 magazine published a story headlined: “A vixen who infiltrated Williams”. She was described in terms more suited to National Enquirer-style scandal sheets.
“Dark haired, displaying a vixen like attractiveness combined with extreme confidence, she uses her feminine wiles to get a foot through the door and when she has a man in her sights they had better look out because when in charm mode she has an irresistible aura,” the magazine wrote.
Schwarz told the Guardian that when Business F1 published allegations “the consequences for me were immediate. I lost the business I had built over 25 years and had to let go of everyone working in my companies.”
Schwarz alleged in court documents that her former employer was behind that story and others that followed, a claim Dorilton emphatically denies, along with all the other allegations made by her. Contacted by the Guardian for this story, the law firm Mayer Brown, which represents Dorilton, de Putron and Dorilton’s chair, Matthew Savage, said it would not be commenting.
Dorilton “made additional false statements to Business F1 magazine that were not part of any complaint, federal or state, filed by the plaintiffs, that included the plaintiff and her company, Stilus, LLC, ‘stealing’ over $6.9m from Dorilton and WIPH [Williams IP Holdings]”, her complaint alleged.
“They further made false statements about the plaintiff Claudia Schwarz having an adulterous sexual affair with the former CEO of Dorilton, Darren Fultz … They were made with malice and with the intent to injure the plaintiff. The malice included an intentional attempt to destroy her reputation and credibility in the racing industry. They were further made with malice as an attempt to destroy her business.”
Dorilton has doubled down on its claims that Schwarz and Fultz were in an inappropriate relationship. During a deposition, her lawyer asked Savage how he knew she was having an inappropriate relationship. Savage pointed to Schwarz using kissy emojis in correspondence with Fultz, that the two scheduled dinners at hotels, the way they “looked at” and “touched” each other, and that they often corresponded in German.
Her lawyer then asked Savage whether he was aware the former CMO had sent kissy emojis to at least two other Dorilton executives. Would this mean she had an inappropriate relationship with them too? Savage replied he wasn’t aware of these correspondences, but did say it was possible Schwarz “groomed” Fultz.
Schwarz and Fultz both deny in court filings they had an inappropriate relationship, sexual or otherwise. Instead, Schwarz claims in her lawsuit she was fired after clashes with Dorilton executives and de Putron. Schwarz alleges he is the real owner of Dorilton and its subsidiary, Williams Grand Prix Racing. Dorilton’s position is that de Putron, a donor to the Conservative party and Eurosceptic thinktanks, is a passive investor in its motorsport holdings.
In August 2023, Schwarz filed a lawsuit for defamation in Florida against Dorilton, Business F1 magazine, and the Formula One company itself for apparently licensing its name to the publication. F1 later settled Schwarz’s case against it under terms which remain confidential. Schwarz also agreed to pull the action against Dorilton and dropped her case against Business F1 magazine.
Then in late 2025 Schwarz countersued Dorilton over her dismissal, and added de Putron as a defendant, claiming he interfered with her contract and oversaw the Business F1 piece because she declined to carry out orders from him that she considered discriminatory and kept asking questions about Williams Racing’s Bermuda operations.
In the lawsuit she alleged: “Ms Schwarz complained about the various business practices of the Williams Racing Team through its owner, Peter de Putron as it relates to marketing. This included complaints as to the manner in which contracts and business operations were being performed in the country of Bermuda, complaints regarding defendant Peter de Putron’s insistence that the Williams Racing Team not be marketed to African Americans and the LGBTQ Community [and] complaints about not allowing participation to donate/support Unicef alongside all the other F1 Teams for Ukraine war victims.”
In a court filing Dorilton argued: “Schwarz also alleges that Dorilton’s chairman, Matthew Savage, told certain investors and affiliated personnel that ‘Schwarz [was] having an affair with Darren Fultz’. Even assuming such statements were made (they were not), they are not actionable.”
Separately, Schwarz filed a breach of contract claim in the US federal court against Williams and Savage, though that case is now stayed pending the outcome of the New York state cases. There are two cases going on in the same New York state court. In one, Dorilton is suing Schwarz for breach of contract, and fraud, alleging she improperly charged them $6.9m (£5.13m). In the other, Schwarz is suing Dorilton, de Putron and Williams IP Holdings for libel and complaints arising from her dismissal and the Business F1 piece.
In January 2026 Dorilton and de Putron filed its first motion to dismiss Schwarz’s case against the company, arguing that her lawsuit is a feeble response to their case against her. The two cases could ultimately be combined, with no trial date set in either.
In April this year Schwarz revived her action against Business F1 magazine, filing a standalone libel lawsuit in Florida against the magazine. The Florida court has scheduled a trial date in June 2027. The magazine appears to be inactive, and in a recent court filing Dorilton described the publication as “now-defunct”. The most recent publication on the website is dated July 2025. The Guardian could not reach the magazine for comment.
So three and a half years after she was fired by Williams, Schwarz is still embroiled in multiple legal disputes.
‘The investor is furious’
Williams Racing dates to 1977, when Frank Williams, a British motorsport executive, started the team. He owned it until 2020, a year before his death, when he sold for €152m (£134m) to Dorilton, a holding company whose new racing team subsidiary’s board includes James Matthews, Pippa Middleton’s husband and the Princess of Wales’s brother-in-law. Williams have won nine constructors’ championships, more than any team in F1 except Ferrari, though the last of the titles arrived in 1997. Williams Racing also boast seven drivers’ championships, the last one, again, in 1997. Since then, the team have slid to middle and lower finishes in F1, coming last in the constructors’ standings from 2018 to 2020, and again in 2022. The team have since made improvements, reaching fifth last year, and are eighth after four races in the current season.
In 2021, the then Williams Racing principal, Jost Capito, retained Schwarz and her marketing company, Stilus, to overhaul the team branding. He had worked with her in his days running Volkswagen Motorsport. That November she agreed to become the interim CMO, and relocated her family from Germany to Bermuda where the Williams team said they were housing assets in a new company, Williams IP Holdings, and needed someone on the ground, according to her lawsuit.
Schwarz alleges in the litigation that the relationship with Dorilton deteriorated after she raised concerns about how Dorilton conducted its Bermuda business and “questioned the legality of contracts that they were entering into”.
Schwarz claims: “It was eventually discovered that … Peter de Putron had set up the Bermuda operation for his own personal tax benefits. However, these operations were not being conducted in accordance with Bermuda law.”
In a motion to dismiss Schwarz’s case filed in April this year, de Putron described Schwarz’s case as “utter fiction” and argued that, even on the facts of her case: “The complaint offers no factual allegations in support of the inference that these purported motives had anything to do with the termination of the [employment] contracts at issue.”
Another incident, Schwarz claims in court documents, led to complaints that culminated in her dismissal. Her recollections are supported by Fultz in a deposition to the court, but broadly contested by de Putron and Dorilton.
Fultz alleges in his deposition that de Putron wanted Wyclef Jean and Shaggy, who performed at a Williams hospitality function, disinvited from the Paddock Club, the exclusive F1 hospitality hub, during the 2022 US Grand Prix in Austin. De Putron, Fultz claimed, objected to people of colour mixing in hospitality events.
Fultz says he introduced Schwarz to de Putron in Austin so she could air her concerns over what she perceived to be discriminatory instructions.
“Shortly before I left, he was at a race in Austin in October of 2022 and WIPH was running its first experience event for fans that weekend, which was a performance by Shaggy, Wyclef Jean and Robin Thicke, and he was complaining about the demographic that was attracted to the event and that performers of colour were hanging out in our paddock club over the weekend,” Fultz said in deposition testimony cited by the court in a decision last year. “It’s a Formula 1 thing. And he did not like the direction of the marketing activities.”
Schwarz, in her complaint, alleges that it was after she complained at the Austin race about the marketing edicts that de Putron ordered her contracts to be terminated.
Shortly after Austin, Dorilton’s CEO, Bjorn Bergabo, said in a video call with Schwarz’s hospitality and marketing team, according to her lawsuit, that “the investor ‘is furious’ and he made it clear ‘that this is not the quality of people he and board wants to see in the paddock club.’ He further said it was embarrassing that [Wyclef] Jean and Shaggy, [the two singers] dared to come to the table of himself, Mr Bergabo and Mr Savage, to say thank you to him for the invitation.” Bergabo, who is no longer with Dorilton, did not reply to a request for comment.
De Putron, in his motion to dismiss Schwarz’s lawsuit, describes her allegations as “incendiary claims about de Putron’s purported ‘personal’ views”, “fabricated” and “designed more to skew the public record than to state a viable claim”.
Schwarz alleges in her complaint that another reason the relationship with Dorilton soured was because de Putron reversed her plans to market to the LGBTQ community, which included pride branding on the livery, in part because of a prospective sponsorship with the Saudi firm Gulf Oil, but also due to “personal” beliefs.
“Mr de Putron instructed the plaintiff … as to the changes he wanted for the vehicle concerning stating that they can’t have any activations in the LGBTQ community because the Saudis would not accept this and that they ‘still kill gays and lesbians there’ and that ‘we won’t support this LGBTQ nonsense anyway,’” she alleges in her complaint.
Schwarz argued that it was counterproductive. “Limiting marketing based on race and sexual orientation would limit revenues, not increase them.”
Schwarz also alleges in her claim that she raised concerns about what she described as de Putron’s decision to prevent Williams from joining the Lewis Hamilton Commission, which assists minorities aiming to work or race in motorsports. In her lawsuit against Dorilton and de Putron, Schwarz alleges the billionaire told Fultz and Capito: “He would ‘rather sell the team’ before he would let the Williams Racing Team become a part of [the Hamilton Commission].”
But de Putron, calling for the claim to be dismissed, says these allegations are untrue. But even if they were true, de Putron argued, Schwarz has acknowledged that any such decisions were “business oriented” – so they do not give rise to any valid claim from her. Even if the court accepted her allegations as true, “de Putron acted to protect his alleged economic interest in the team’s commercial success”.
Dorilton, in its litigation against Schwarz, alleged that the company fired her not just because of the alleged pilfering and illicit relationship, but because she performed poorly. Dorilton, which also charges Schwarz created a hostile work environment, commissioned a 132-page report from the marketing and advertising firm Harper Litigation Consulting and Research LLC, which is included in court papers. Dorilton paid Harper $750 per hour for the work.
The report alleges that “Schwarz failed to perform the chief marketing officer (CMO) role properly and effectively”, did not “professionally develop the Williams Racing brand strategy”, and “overbilled plaintiffs and submitted invoices lacking customary documentation”.
Harper added: “As an experienced professional in the areas of marketing and public relations, my conclusion is that defendants [Schwarz] did not come close to providing Plaintiffs with marketing and public relations services that were compliant with best industry practices or were at the level of reasonable skill and care to be expected from a competent and professional supplier of marketing and public relations services.”
Capito, who hired Schwarz at Williams, disagreed. “We tracked the performance of all teams at Williams weekly, and Claudia consistently delivered on every KPI [key performance indicator] with her team while working within the budget,” he told the Guardian. “Based on my experience working with Claudia at Williams, I do not believe that any of the allegations made against her are true.”
Schwarz says of her time at Williams: “The culture there felt like a classic boys’ club where women were treated as objects. I did my job and delivered results, yet after I was terminated they alleged I had started an affair with the CEO and gained millions because of it. In reality, and confirmed by court documents, Mr Fultz never signed my contracts – I did not even know him personally at the time.”
Our Dear Leader, or ODL for short
Standing backstage of this bitter soap opera is de Putron, 62, who made his fortune in quant trading, a financial system that uses algorithms to predict small price movements and automates the trade decisions. He is the brother-in-law of the former Conservative minister Andrea Leadsom.
Like many in his asset class, he spreads his holdings over various, opaque companies, partnerships and trusts in far-flung, often tax-free locales. Dorilton has fought tooth and nail against Schwarz’s efforts to depose de Putron, arguing he has nothing to do with the holding company and did not make the decision to dismiss her.
In October 2025 Andrew Borrok, a judge in the New York litigation, agreed to ask the royal court in Jersey to serve de Putron a notice of a deposition, which occurred in February, writing that the billionaire appeared to have a much greater role than Dorilton claimed. Dorilton appealed against that ruling, and the appellate court heard oral arguments last month. The five-judge panel unanimously confirmed the lower court ruling, ordered de Putron pay Schwarz’s appeal costs, and wrote that the financier may have had personal reasons for the former CMO’s dismissal.
“The record contains substantial evidence that de Putron was directly and intimately involved in the management of plaintiffs, appeared to have been displeased with defendants’ performance in terms of the fan base they were engaging, and possibly was involved in the termination of plaintiffs’ contracts with defendants that forms the basis of this dispute.”
If Schwarz is ultimately successful in deposing the private de Putron, it would be a rare moment in the spotlight. There are few photographs of de Putron available. He “tries to avoid the limelight and goes as far as to ensure that there are not even pictures of him on the Internet”, Fultz wrote in his own breach-of-contract lawsuit against his former employer.
Schwarz claims in her lawsuit that employees of Dorilton and its companies were instructed never to refer to de Putron by name. Judge Borrok noted they often called him Our Dear Leader, or ODL for short. On Zoom calls and in Signal chats, he is listed as only A or AA.
“In order to communicate with Mr de Putron electronically, I would not use his name in my phone or in any such communications to maintain confidentiality,” Fultz wrote in a March 2025 affidavit filed in New York state court. “Instead, I was instructed to designate Mr de Putron as ‘A’ or ‘AA’ or other names on my phone or other electronic devices when communicating with him through Signal and/or other electronic means.”
The approach could be comical. Once when de Putron visited Dorilton’s office in New York, the security badge created for him to enter the building had his name as Ralph Macchio and a picture of the actor, Fultz recounted. Dorilton employees in the following weeks referred to him as Ralph, Fultz said.
For almost the first two years of the case against Schwarz, Judge Borrok deferred to Dorilton’s position that de Putron was a third-party passive investor. Any mention of his name in public filings made by Schwarz was blacked out.
But that changed in February 2025. After citing testimony from former and current executives who described him as a hands-on owner, Judge Borrok ruled: “As it relates to the motions for sealing, it is clear now that it is simply inappropriate for plaintiffs to redact Mr de Putron’s name on the basis that he is merely a third-party passive investor.”
In October 2025, when he agreed to write to the royal court in Jersey to facilitate de Putron’s deposition there, Borrok wrote: “Significantly, the court notes that the record before the court indicates that the employees were instructed (including former CEO Fultz) to conceal and obscure Mr de Putron’s identity and role in the management of these plaintiffs.”
Both New York lawsuits have been reassigned to a new judge, which could now slow down the cases.
‘I have been fighting for three years’
Schwarz, with multiple battles on her hands, is otherwise no longer involved in motorsport. “There is no grass growing for me anywhere in the marketing industry any more,” she said.
“My reputation, built over 25 years, and everything I created has been destroyed by them. Because of their allegations and campaigns, clients are even afraid of being seen next to me, the ‘vixen’ they tried to turn me into.”
The last three years, she laments, have put enormous strain on her family. She is married and has a 15-year-old son.
She says she looks forward to the cases getting to trial so her son can sit in the courtroom and hear what she expects will be her truth.
“I have been fighting for three years – for justice and for my son,” she says. “I want all the evidence and all testimonies to become public. Most importantly, I want my son to be able to sit in the courtroom and see me standing up for the truth – so he knows that truth must never be buried, and that standing up for justice is something you hold on to – even when everything in you is afraid and it hurts.”
Schwarz, who tears up when discussing the burden on her family, views herself as fighting a just battle against powerful men who get their way grinding down opponents through threats, innuendo and litigation.
“How is it possible in the 21st century that women are still reduced to the idea that they must have ‘slept their way to the top’ to succeed?
“To me it revealed a deeply disturbing culture where a small circle of powerful men treat women in degrading and demeaning ways while protecting each other.”
