Pierre Gasly's hopes of following up his impressive performance in qualifying with an equally good result on Sunday were botched by a big strategy mistake made by the AlphaTauri pitwall.
Gasly lined up seventh on the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix grid and held his own in the opening stages of the 52-lap event.
But to his complete surprise, the Frenchman was called in after just seven laps to swap his mediums for a set of hard tyres.
Alas, Gasly emerged well down the order and engulfed in traffic, bewildered by his team's call.
"It was pretty much a nightmare in the second stint," said the AlphaTauri charger.
"The first stint felt good, I was at the time just behind Daniel [Ricciardo] and just in front of Lando [Norris].
"It felt good with the tyres and I planned to go longer than that. I got the call after seven laps only to box, so I was a bit surprised.
"We ended up behind all the Williams, Haas, Saubers [Alfa Romeo] and had to fight very early on in the stint and after five or six laps I had blistering on the rear.
"From that moment I understood it wasn't going to be fun. I tried to fight as hard as I could but we were very slow with the blistering, we had to pit very early again, for sure it didn't help our race."
AlphaTauri team boss Franz Tost was quick to acknowledge his outfit's strategy error.
"We clearly made a mistake strategy-wise, as we called him in too early for his first pit stop," admitted Tost.
"His last stint was quite long and he did what he could, but there were no points for him today," said Tost.
However, there was a point for teammate Daniil Kvyat who finished 10th after a solid drive from P16 on the grid.
"I'm very satisfied today, I felt like it was a mega race,”"said Kvyat. "As a team we did a great job, we were able to squeeze everything out of the car and I think today's result was the maximum on the table.
"We took every opportunity that came our way and, unlike last week, we were able to capitalise on them."
But Kvyat's main takeaway from Sunday's race was that he needs to step up his performance in qualifying to start higher up on the grid.
"I generally feel quite strong on Sundays, but we definitely need to put it together on Saturdays as starting the race from a better position would make things much easier to regularly fight for points.
"However, starting from P16 and finishing 10th to score one point makes us happy today."
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