Timo Glock blamed his car's performance when running with the harder tyre compound for his disappointing race at the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The Toyota driver started from second place behind team-mate Jarno Trulli, and he took the lead on the first lap and managed to open a gap to the Italian before making his first pitstop.
After that, however, Glock struggled badly with the prime tyres, losing a lot of time to the front-runners and with that all his chances of a good result.
In the end, the German finished a distant seventh.
"Yeah, difficult (race)," Glock told the
BBC. "Promising start I would say. I won the start against Jarno from the dirty side. I was quite surprised and I could open slightly the gap to Jarno in the first stint.
"Then we were the first guys to pit, which was already critical, but when I went out on prime tyres the first two laps I just lost ... I don't know how many seconds and even in the first 10-15 laps. No chance.
"And I was nearly six tenths to one second slower than Jarno. After 20 laps, the race was over for the podium."
He added: "Just the tyres didn't work and that's it. Prime tyres - for me it felt like it didn't get any heat in and just lost everything in the second stint."