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.”