Nico Rosberg admits it will "take a while" to recover from his disappointing result in Germany, one which sees him head into the summer break 19 points down on Lewis Hamilton.
Rosberg's race unravelled from lights out, as he appeared to get bogged down at the second phase of his start and dropped from first to fourth by Turn 1. Despite a mid-race fightback Rosberg's charge was hampered by a five-second penalty and a Mercedes "stopwatch failure" at the subsequent stop, meaning he had to settle for fourth position behind Hamilton and the Red Bulls.
In a video message to his fans on Sunday night he tweeted with the caption "Disappointed after German GP", Rosberg admitted the summer break has come at a good time as he looks to regroup and get his championship challenge back on track.
"My little title sums it up, everything went wrong -- it was a really crap day today, crap race," he said. "Everything went wrong really. I can't be bothered to go into details now.
"It was amazing all the support I got, I'm really thankful for that -- it was really awesome and I'm really thankful for that. I'm sorry I didn't get to finish it in celebrations ... but anyways, next time.
"Happy holidays for those of you taking some days off. I'm going to enjoy them for sure, it's going to be awesome -- once I recover from this day. It will take a while, but I will get there."
The result means Hamilton has outscored Rosberg by 62 points since the pair collided at the Spanish Grand Prix in May. After that race, Hamilton trailed his Mercedes teammate by 43 points in the standings. Since that clash in Spain, which ended a streak of seven consecutive victories, Rosberg has won just one race.
The video message can be seen in full below: