Lando Norris was left wondering what might have been after he finished seventh at the Italian Grand Prix last weekend.
The Briton started the race in third after Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Sir Lewis Hamilton all picked up penalties.
With Daniel Ricciardo behind in fourth, it looked as though there was a chance for McLaren to climb onto the podium on Sunday, but it was ultimately not to be.
Norris got bogged down off the start as he fell to sixth, and he made a mistake into Turn One later on in the race, which put him behind the Alpine of Fernando Alonso.
READ: Lando Norris: Alpine have ‘done a pretty bad job’
The 22-year-old managed to recover the position not long after, but he had lost time to Ricciardo and Pierre Gasly in front.
Norris went long into the race on his tyres and, as he came out of the pits, he was side by side with the AlphaTauri.
The pair lost momentum, opening the door for a superb move from Hamilton on both of them, before Norris cleared Ricciardo and Gasly to give himself a final position of P7 after Sainz and Perez had also made their way through.
Without an amalgamation of unfortunate circumstances in Monza, the six-time podium finisher might have managed a fifth-placed finish on Sunday.
“There were some mistakes with the launch settings, things I couldn’t change or adapt,” Norris told Formula1.com.
“So I was dealing with a car which wasn’t made to do a launch, basically, which meant I went into anti-stall like two or three times and it lost me a lot of time, a lot of positions and probably cost me fifth place.
“So I would say quite disappointed because I feel like I did a very good job when I drove well, we just made too many mistakes.”
Towards the end of the afternoon, Norris asked his engineer to stop talking and let him focus, and he elaborated as to his mindset while driving.
“I perform better when I’m relaxing, when I’m chilled, of course, you just want to be able to be in your zone and concentrate and do your thing,” he explained.
“We would have finished P6, I think, if there wasn’t a Safety Car. We didn’t box, which is maybe another mistake.
“I’m just good at driving and therefore just little things [like] updates on gaps and stuff I just don’t need when there’s five laps to go. I can see it in my mirrors.
READ: Lando Norris pondered ‘good massage’ in Amsterdam
“So, I was relaxed, I felt like I was doing a very good job, just I don’t like people talking to me, that’s all.”
Ricciardo’s late reliability failure caused the late Safety Car, after Alonso had also fallen victim to a power unit issue.
Esteban Ocon finished 11th, so Norris’ points mean McLaren have closed the gap to Alpine to 18 points in the battle for fourth in the championship.