By alley - Sep 18, 2017, 8:58 AM ET

Singapore my best GP yet, Sainz says

Carlos Sainz described his fourth place in the Singapore Grand Prix as the best drive of his Formula 1 career to date.

The Toro Rosso driver – who will move to Renault in 2018 on a loan deal – secured his highest finishing position since making his debut at the start of 2015. In testing conditions, Sainz rose to fourth place by not changing the tires he started on during the second Safety Car period, gaining track position and then defending from Sergio Perez for the remainder of the race when the track dried out.

"The best one, no doubt," Sainz replied when asked where the performance rates. "Apart from the start and with all the complications this race had, I had very good pace in the wet, very good pace on the used inter [tire] against the new inter and then managing to fend off guys. So I would say it's one of the best stints I've done in Formula 1."

"As soon as it started raining I decided to go on the inter; I was pretty convinced about it with my engineer – 'Go for the inter, go for the inter, we'll drive fast!' We did it and I think together with Lewis, we were one of the only ones to do it. They told me on the radio Lewis was also on the inter, everyone was wondering if it wasn't the extreme and like in China like, I got it wrong but then I heard that Lewis was on the inter and I said, 'OK, we could have done the right thing.'"

Having only scored seven points in the five previous races – retiring twice – Sainz is hoping to use the result as a catalyst for a strong end to the season.

"I'm gonna look back on this one and try to create a bit of momentum. Although there's races when you're in the midfield where you do very well and you just extract a P9, a P8 out of it. [On Sunday], you do things very very well and you extract a P4, so that's why I think I was celebrating."