Williams were left stinging in the rain on Sunday after what might have been a sensational home grand prix for the British Formula One team ended up as a damp squib.

“I think at the end of any race where you were leading and then don’t finish in those positions, there’s a sense of disappointment,” deputy principal Claire Williams told Reuters after Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas finished fourth and fifth.

“Both Felipe and Valtteri made stunning starts and outpaced the Mercedes and led the race. Williams were one-two at a British Grand Prix for the first time in I don’t know how long,” she added.

Massa led the first 20 laps, losing out to Mercedes’ world champion and race winner Lewis Hamilton at the first pitstop and then dropping further behind when the rain, typical of any British summer, came down.

Bottas also led for a lap before his first stop.

“If it had stayed dry, we should have been on the podium on Sunday. Sometimes you just get unlucky,” said Williams, whose team have won at home 10 times but not since 1997.

In hotter conditions, the Mercedes-powered Williams had looked a fraction slower than the works Mercedes but quicker than Ferrari’s Se-bastian Vettel who finished third.

When the skies opened, any aerodynamic advantage dissolved like soggy cardboard.

“Since two years we are trying to understand why we are not quick in the rain,” Massa told reporters.

“If you see the difference in terms of lap times, we could have fought with Mercedes on Sunday. They were one or two tenths quicker than us, not more than that, in free air. In the rain we were maybe two seconds (slower).

“Last year was very bad in the rain and this year also,” added the Brazilian.

“We try to analyse this but we don’t find it (the answer).”

Bottas, who was told early on not to race Massa but focus on pulling away from the Mercedes duo, agreed the weather had scuppered his hopes.

“We really struggled even in the damp – that is when Nico Rosberg got us,” he said.

“When the speed gets slow we lose a lot of downforce, there was even a big difference between me and Felipe on the intermediates.

“That is still an area we really need to work on, we are so much slower than anyone in the wet.”

Meanwhile, Vettel’s third place finish on Sunday was met with more pessimism than optimism by his Ferrari F1 principal Maurizio Arrivabene.

“I think the glass is half empty, not half full,” the Italian told reporters.

“We were doing a very good job in terms of strategy, the rain was helping us.

“But if the race was dry instead of being wet, the result was completely different,” added Arrivabene gloomily.

“So if we want to be serious, we need to start from there and to work on the problems that we have.”

On Sunday, only when it rained, and after Vettel pitted earlier than others for intermediate tyres, did the podium become within reach – although not for Kimi Raikkonen who finished a disappointing eighth.

It was the first time since Monaco in May that a Ferrari driver had finished in the top three – even if Vettel won in Malaysia in March and the team have been the closest challengers to champions Mercedes.

Asked what the problem was, Arrivabene replied: “We have to discuss it in-house.

“We were quite slow on the straights without gaining anything on the high-speed curves... this is the problem.”