An unseen incident in the final stint of the British Grand Prix ruined Carlos Sainz's race and left the beleaguered Williams Formula 1 driver absolutely exasperated.
At least, what happened to Sainz was unseen. The television broadcast did show a replay of one half of it: Charles Leclerc dropping out of the points after defending from an out-of-view opponent on the run to Stowe, having a slide mid-corner, and running through the gravel.
What was not shown, though, was what happened to the opponent: Sainz.
He was attacking Leclerc for eighth place and pressured his old Ferrari team-mate into defending on slicks on the damp inside line. When Leclerc had his wobble and slid wide, Sainz should have picked up the pieces: except Leclerc's moment was so unfortunately timed that the Ferrari washed out across the front of Sainz's Williams and basically took Sainz with him.
"He lost control of the car and crashed into me," Sainz said. "And that was it. I went back to P12 with a damaged car and I finished P12."
This was well short of what Sainz deserved, but unfortunately indicative of how his first season at Williams is constantly being undermined by different issues. Sainz has scored one point in the last four races and has 13 points to team-mate Alex Albon's 46. Albon has been the quicker Williams driver so far, but that comparison is harsh on Sainz, who was set to beat Albon on Sunday before Leclerc's unwitting intervention.
Sainz said this was "a bit like the whole year so far, we were doing everything right" as the clean weekend he had been hoping for seemed to have largely come together. Instead he admitted he is now "a bit fed up with this situation where something always happens to us that is out of our control".
"For me P12 is like retiring," Sainz said. "In the position we are, it feels like a retirement, especially because we were running P7, P8, we had done everything right.
"Yes, maybe the others took a bit more gambles on the strategy calls but we did a very solid race with management of the pace and the race so we were in the ideal position to score a top-seven, top-eight result.
"And suddenly fighting with Charles, he lost control of the car and took me out.
"It is what it is, there's nothing we can do, but I welcome this two-week break to see if something changes in my life so we can start having an F1 season - because this has been everything but good so far."
Sainz has scored points six times in 12 events but has not finished higher than eighth in a race for Williams this season. He crashed out of the opener in the wet on the opening lap in Australia, accident damage forced him to retire in Bahrain, and he did not even make the start of the grand prix in Austria due to a brake problem that led to a fire.
That is clearly taking its toll on Sainz, who joined Williams with immense enthusiasm - and with a fantastic reception from the team - but has had to suffer through a very trying first season post-Ferrari. And having often stressed how much he felt Williams's own execution has been lacking at times this year, the fact it had got Silverstone largely right only to be denied late on by another driver's error was a clear sucker punch.
"I'm glad that as a team we executed a solid race, it's just that…honestly, it's so frustrating to have so many of these issues or things out of your control in a row," he said.
"I cannot explain to you how you feel as an athlete when you are going to a simulator, doing all your marketing events, putting on a happy face, doing all your free practice, doing everything you can to score a good result - the race you take your risks, you do everything right, and then something like this out of your control happens and you're out.
"Now we need to wait another two weeks to go racing but it gets to a point where it's just extremely frustrating and depressing."
The silver lining for Williams was that Albon was in prime position to pick up the pieces, so the team's result overall was still solid - although it has been caught yet again by big-scoring midfield rivals, with Sauber bagging an unlikely podium with Nico Hulkenberg and Alpine and Aston Martin also finishing ahead on the day.
Albon had been the faster driver through the weekend but a compromised qualifying left him behind Sainz on the grid even though he felt Q3 was possible - something Sainz was less confident of - so salvaging eighth was a good return given he has also found scoring points tough of late, and there were times when this weekend got quite tough.
"We've been struggling this weekend in general with the performance of the car," said Albon.
"We were overheating the intermediates pretty badly, but because it was still damp on the slick tyre, it was actually putting our tyre temperatures in a good window and we were quick.
"We need to learn and understand why we were so quick on Sunday compared to the rest of the weekend.
"From our disappointing qualifying session we bounced back to a position that is where we deserve to be."
