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An Azerbaijan Grand Prix podium fell into George Russell's lap in the final laps - yet the Mercedes Formula 1 man found the Baku race "pretty infuriating" and struggled to hide his frustrations in the aftermath.
Russell was on course to finish fifth, having handily outperformed team-mate Lewis Hamilton through the weekend, but the collision between Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez promoted him to third place.
He struggled in the opening stint, being overtaken by Max Verstappen and dropping four seconds back from the Red Bull, and looked in a bit of strife at the start of his second stint - but his race then came alive as he reeled in and overtook Verstappen, before breaking far enough away to avoid being caught by a fresh-tyred Lando Norris.
"We'll definitely take the podium but it was such an odd race," Russell remarked post-race to F1TV, before launching into something of an unprompted tirade.
"The first half of the race, we were 1.5s off the pace.
"The last 20 laps, I was a second quicker than Oscar [Piastri] and Charles [Leclerc] and three tenths quicker than Max, Checo and Carlos.
"It's the same circuit, same driver, same car. We just went from a yellow tyre [medium] to a white tyre [hard].
"Honestly, it's actually pretty infuriating that it changes this much."
And while inconsistencies from stint-to-stint and session-to-session have been a particular bugbear of his Mercedes team, Russell made it clear it wasn't the Mercedes car that he saw as the culprit.
"It's not just Mercedes, it's every team, and every driver. One session you're fast, the next you're not. And there's only one thing that changes.
"It is a black magic. I think even the people who make the tyres [Pirelli] don't understand the tyres. But... I think we all need probably serious conversations again about what's going on."
Russell - who is a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, F1's driver union - said practice running on Friday hadn't foreshadowed this kind of discrepancy between the compounds because the track was dirty and much slower.
Saturday morning's running was dedicated to the soft tyre, which was effectively a qualifying-only tyre this weekend.
"We've got 2000 people working their butts off to deliver the fastest car. And 20 laps of the race we had a car that was comfortable fighting for victory. 20 other laps we had a car that probably shouldn't have been in the points.
"And the only difference is the tyres. It's not good enough, really".
