Lando Norris missed out on P6 by just a tenth of a second in Saudi Arabia, but the Briton was unbothered by the shortfall and preferred to take away from his weekend the progress achieved by McLaren.
In Jeddah, Norris , who had qualified P11, was outrun to the checkered flag on the final lap by Alpine's Esteban Ocon, the Frenchman edging the McLaren driver by just 0.107s.
Norris reckoned he had missed the opportunity to detach himself from Ocon with three laps to go when the field was forced to slow in the double yellow flag zone where Alex Albon and Lance Stroll had come together.
"I think I was just a bit unlucky at the end with Esteban, it was the double yellow and that was my one chance to pull away and I couldn’t," said Norris.
But after a point-less opening race in Bahrain and the frustrations linked to the underperformance of McLaren's MCL36, Norris was encouraged overall by his race.
"I think a lot of positives. P7 – good points, a little bit better than we were expecting but I guess a little bit down to retirements from some other cars, but we made the most of it.
"Good to see there is some potential in the car and some positives which means we can look forward to some good results.
"It's just for the motivation for everyone. We still have a lot of things to look forward to, it's not like we've had two terrible weekends and it's like, no one wants to smile. We can smile a little bit and we understand we have a lot of work to do.
"And there's a lot of progress we've got to make if we want to be anywhere near competitive to top teams, huge work. But we know that, everyone back in the factory knows that, and they're already working harder than ever on all of those things, and coming up with a lot of new things.
"We're just good, these things always help, and definitely getting some points today and P7 rather than just like P10 and one point.
"That extra confirmation of a P7 is good news, and considering I was fighting for P6 as well. So yeah, good for everyone here, good for the guys and girls and good everyone in the factory."
©McLaren
Earlier in the evening, Norris had trailed his teammate Daniel Ricciardo as the two McLaren drivers were on the verge of entering the top-ten.
The Briton rued the Aussie's retirement as it likely deprived his team of a double-points finish.
"We should have had two cars in the points," he said. "Daniel drove a good race from his position but he just got unlucky at the end as well.
"But there are positives, which I think are the main things we have to look at, at the minute.
"I don’t know if it was our fault or the back-end’s fault, we will see; from my side everything is good and I look forward to many more races."
"We know we need to keep working hard in order to deliver more performance to the car, so points like today are great motivation to keep pushing," added McLaren F1 boss Andreas Seidl.
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