It may be that a typical well-written C program for an algorithm is more concise and/or elegant, but how exactly do we scale developers writing C programs well? For that matter, forget algorithms, what about C string handling? Yes, Rust has a gazillion string types (offtopic: I don't really understand those complaints, as usually you only need a few), but whether in the standard library or a third-party library, I don't get the sense that I need to be very diligent. And I don't think people should need high diligence for using strings.
As an OS nerd, this is what I like to use as an example: yes, the seL4 verified microkernel is impressive and if it was written in a language other than C, it wouldn't have both the practicality and the assurance. It was specified in Haskell but ultimately the C is what is deployed, so C it is. A Rust version might not be verifiable even in the next ten years. But the people who can't use seL4 and need an 80% "reasonably secure" or whatever OS have a strong case to use Rust over C. The formal verification for the C code of seL4 is partly a crutch for C's lack of safety and correctness by default.