Lando Norris was left to rue a poor strategy call as he dropped outside the points to P11 in his first British Grand Prix.
It had been the ideal start for the McLaren driver, passing Daniel Ricciardo for seventh at the start and just holding him off through the Maggotts, Becketts sequence on Lap 1.
An undercut by the Australian would put him back ahead, however, and as most drivers completed their stops under the Safety Car, the decision to stay out and pit later ultimately wrecked his race.
“As a team, I don’t think we had the strongest car today compared to some of the other midfield teams which is a bit frustrating. It made life a little more difficult for Carlos and myself,” he explained.
“The strategy is where we lost it today, but that’s more of a hindsight thing rather than just making a blatantly obvious wrong call.
“We tried something and it didn’t work out today, but you can see other cars were dropping away at the end, such as Alex [Albon] and a few of the others ahead.
“Maybe on another day, it would have worked out, just not today.”
Sainz, however, was one of the beneficiaries as he moved up from 13th to sixth, holding off a charging Ricciardo in the closing laps.
“I think the last few laps with Daniel were fun because he was just that tiny bit quicker that made him get into my DRS,” he said.
“And once he had the DRS, with a headwind on the straight, my clipping on the battery, we were running more wing than him, so it meant he was really catching me on the straights but we were just hanging on in the corners.
“We were pushing flat out. These were proper qualifying laps the whole way through because the hard tyres allowed you to do so.”
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Sunday’s race marked the third time in five races that the Spaniard had finished ‘best of the rest’, as McLaren added another point to their now 21-point margin over Renault in the Constructors’ standings.
“We’re progressing, the car is alive in the wind tunnel, we are bringing upgrades to every race,” Sainz revealed.
“The only thing that we know is we haven’t cleared the midfield yet. Many people wanted us to be already clear of the midfield, but we haven’t.
“With the Renaults battling thereabouts, one race they will be quicker, another race we will be quicker, today they were quicker.
“We need to improve the car at low speeds because that is what will give us the edge that at the moment we don’t have.”
