Michael Schumacher said seventh place was the maximum he could have hoped for in the German Grand Prix after saying he had "squeezed everything" out of his car.
The seven-time champion was optimistic of a strong result after starting the race from third position, but his hopes were shortlived and the Mercedes driver was unable to keep up with his rivals.
In the end he dropped down to seventh position, which he said was the best possible result given his pace.
"There are nicer ways to finish a home race than falling back from third to seventh place," said
Schumacher. "I squeezed everything I could out of the car but, unfortunately, that's everything we could manage today. It's a pity because I would have loved to have given something more to all our Mercedes-Benz colleagues who were supporting us today.
"Before this weekend, we expected to be racing between P5 and P7, and of course fifth place would have been the better option, but seventh was our maximum in these circumstances.
"I got a decent start and the short battle with Sebastian [Vettel] was fun. After that, unfortunately, there weren't too many highlights, apart from setting the fastest lap, perhaps. However, we couldn't maintain that pace for very long. Now we have to look forwards and do our maximum at the next race."
Team-mate Nico Rosberg completed a low-key home race for Mercedes, the German crossing the line in 10th position to pick up a point.
"It feels OK to have scored one point today after such a bad qualifying yesterday and starting right at the back," he said. "We had a good strategy and I had great fun out there at times overtaking so many people to move from 21st to 10th place.
"Some of the guys I had to overtake a couple of times and there were some nice manoeuvres."
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