Williams admits it got Albon's strategy "wrong" twice in F1 Dutch GP

Albon had started fourth and tumbled down the order as one of only five drivers to commit to slicks, opting not to make a late change to intermediates.

He subsequently climbed back up the order and was running as high as sixth when the rain returned in the closing stages.

Vowles conceded that staying out at the start ultimately turned out to be the wrong call.

"You either stop on lap one or lap two, or you stay out," Vowles told Autosport.

"And the real wrong that a number of teams did is then stop after that point. Once you're committed, commit.

"The reason why we didn't stop was on the radar initially it didn't look like it was going to be as bad as it was. Now, clearly, the losses were quite significant to inter runners.

"You still saw us come back into a points position. It's not outlandishly terrible, but it was the wrong decision."

Albon again initially stayed out on the lap when most of the field came in when the rain hit the track late in the race, stopping instead on the next tour.

Vowles said the second strategy call was also the wrong one.

"What we need to go back and do is go look at our systems, our tools, our communication, what can we improve in that process? Because we got it wrong," he added.

Alex Albon, Williams FW45

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

"The second stop as well, coming in for those inters, again, that was wrong. That was one lap late.

"On all of these the key point is to reflect on it. We know it's one lap late, that's the easy but the hard bit is how in hindsight, with all the information you have, can you pull that back and do a better decision with it?"

Albon, who went on to finish in eighth place, agreed with his team boss that Williams needed to analyse what had done wrong.

"We need to review that second pitstop call," he said. "It's so tricky because I didn't pit and for the first half lap, I thought perfect, I've actually overcut everyone right now, I've overcut the two cars in front of me, because sector one and midway through sector two it was still dry.

"And then within 10 seconds, we went from a slick to a full wet tyre. And I was crawling in the last four corners, and we lost out to Lando [Norris] and George on the on the undercut.

"It's one of those things. It feels like we finished today slightly disappointed that we didn't finish sixth, but we still finished eighth. It's still an amazing result for us.

"And we've been here on pace this weekend, there's no mistake about it. It's been our strongest weekend. It's the best I've felt in the car in my time at Williams.

"And so there's so many positives to take from here. I do think we've been a little bit unlucky, I think, in a weird way we didn't take the risks, like some others, to pit so early in the inter tyres, because in that sense, it was actually quite a risk to do that.

"It wasn't actually inters by the time they pitted. But during the lap itself, it turned to inters."