New behind-the-scenes documentary lays bare the precipitous F1 decline of Williams

In a behind-the-scenes documentary to be broadcast next month, Claire Williams tearfully questions her own credentials to lead the Williams Formula One team back to success. After a week in which her technical director, Paddy Lowe, failed even to have a car ready for the first two days of winter testing, the extraordinary footage lays bare the turmoil engulfing one of British motorsport’s iconic companies.

“When should I go, ‘Actually, maybe I’m not the right person to do this? Am I good enough to do it? Do I have the capability?’” Williams says, during the 10-part Netflix production, Drive to Survive. “It’s very difficult to come to terms with.”

The decline at Williams since she took over as deputy team principal in 2013, assuming day-to-day running of the team from her father, Sir Frank, has been precipitous. From a high of a third-place finish in the constructors’ standings in 2014 and 2015, Williams finished bottom last season, receiving the lowest share of bonus payments. On the evidence of a hapless first test in Barcelona, where the team described their performance as “embarrassing”, there appears scant hope of a revival this year.

The documentary, commissioned by F1 owners Liberty Media to lift the veil on the sport’s inner workings, leaves no doubt as to how toxic the situation within Williams has become. In one scene, Lawrence Stroll, the Canadian billionaire and chief sponsor of a race seat for his son Lance, walks out in disgust after a wretched result in the Monaco Grand Prix. In another, shot at Clare’s Bedfordshire home, she shows her infant son a toy car, only for her husband, Marc Harris, to say: “It goes faster than our car.”

For all that she second-guesses her abilities, Williams is adamant that she will not shirk the responsibility of steering the team through its troubles. “I’ve been given a wonderful opportunity, and I only agreed to do it because I thought at the time that I could turn the business around,” she says. “I’ve got this whole history that I need to protect. If, under my watch, that were all to go horribly wrong, it would be my fault.”

One fellow team principal has expressed surprise that Williams allowed herself to be drawn into such candour on camera. But the series contains several revelations from elsewhere in the paddock. Christian Horner, for example, is seen at breaking point at Red Bull, his rage palpable when Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo take each other out in Baku. “That’s 25, 30 points we’ve just f----- away,” he tells Helmut Marko, the team’s motorsport advisor.

Horner ultimately lost patience with his two feuding drivers, even before Ricciardo – who held ambitions of replacing Valtteri Bottas at Mercedes – jumped ship to Renault. In one episode, also featuring his wife, former Spice Girl Geri, he acidly refers to his child’s two pet donkeys as Max and Daniel. “Managing donkeys is sometimes easier than managing drivers,” he says.

Similarly, Drive to Survive shines a light on the breakdown of Horner’s relationship with Cyril Abiteboul, his Renault counterpart, whom he holds responsible for the multiple failures of Red Bull’s engines in 2018. The experience is one that Horner likens to paying a first-class fare for an economy ticket, comments that Abiteboul angrily claim “cross a red line”.