Felipe Massa says Williams has a problem in wet conditions but did not help itself in the British Grand Prix.
The Brazilian led for the first 20 laps but dropped behind Lewis Hamilton after the first round of pit stops when he stopped a lap later than the championship leader. While saying the later stop was understandable, Massa says Williams got the timing of its second stop wrong when rain started to fall, which compounded its lack of pace in the wet.
"The rain started and we did right to stay out on track at first, because it was so easy to stop and then just go back out with the track too dry and destroy the tyres," Massa said. "But then we stayed out too long. So we made a mistake, that was the biggest mistake to stay so long on the track and not stop when the others stopped.
"I was even telling the team ‘maybe corner 15 is too difficult’, or maybe a different corner, through all these laps in the rain. Even once - two laps before I stopped - I even said ‘I think now it’s getting too difficult’ but then they asked me to stay out and then I tried. For sure it was a mistake, but apart from that our car was too slow in the rain.
“Even in that moment when it was still damp in some places, Ferrari was much quicker than us. There were some laps that they were maybe more than two seconds quicker than us. Then if you add also the lap where we stayed out too long it’s another 10 seconds [lost], then we stopped and then I came out behind Sebastian [Vettel]. Even if I came out in front he was quicker than me. I don’t know if I was able to hold him or not. But we gave the position, and this is something we need to learn and not do anymore.
“It’s true that we were not the only team that made mistakes today. If you see, Kimi [Raikkonen] stopped too early, so we were not the only ones who made mistakes, but it cost us maybe a little bit.”
Having dropped to fourth in the rain, Massa says Williams has been unable to understand why it is so weak in the wet.
“For sure we have a problem. Since two years ago we are trying to understand why we are not quick in the rain, which is not nice. We have a problem, if you see the difference in lap times we were maybe fighting with Mercedes today, they were 0.1 or 0.2s quicker than us in free air, not more than that. In the rain we were maybe two seconds.”
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