Williams admit they 'should have won' the British GP

Williams have admitted that they should have won the British GP but for a race-wrecking tactical mistake.

The Grove outfit, heavily criticised for dithering before belatedly allowing Valtteri Bottas to challenge Felipe Massa for the lead of the race when the two Williams cars were running first and second, initially defended their conservative approach.

But the team have now accepted they should have been more aggressive and, although their mistake became academic in the second-half of the race when it started to rain, Pat Symonds, Williams’ tactical chief, has acknowledged the team were architects of their own downfall.

Asked by Sky Sports F1 if Williams should have won at Silverstone had it stayed dry, Symonds admitted: “I think we should. I think as we played the race we were more likely to finish second/third, and of course hindsight is a wonderful thing and I think we can see how we could have won it, I think we can see what we could have done, and one of the great things at Williams is that we are pretty self-critical and we do look at ourselves and say what could we do better - we've learned from it.”

After a series of terse exchanges over the team radio, Bottas was eventually permitted to challenge Massa, but says the call came too late.

"I had an opportunity at the beginning and it was at that point when l wasn’t allowed to overtake," the Finn explained. "In that first stint my pace was quite a bit better. As we saw in Felipe’s in-lap, l gained nearly one second. The timing in these things can be critical; when l got the call that we could race l didn’t have that advantage anymore."

Massa and Bottas finished the race fourth and fifth respectively at Silverstone after struggling for aerodynamic grip in the wet.