F1 journalist and close friend of Michael Schumacher provides tragic health update

Michael Schumacher suffered a near-fatal brain injury in a skiing accident in 2013. Photo / Getty Images

A close friend of Michael Schumacher claims the Formula 1 legend is a “case without hope”.

Schumacher, who won the drivers’ championship seven times, suffered a near-fatal brain injury in a skiing accident in the French Alps in 2013.

He fell and hit his head on a rock, needing 250 days in a medically induced coma before returning home. He has not been seen in public for more than a decade.

Even some of those closest to one of the most famous names in motorsport have been in the dark about his condition.

In 2020 Italian media reported that French cardiologist Philippe Menasche was set to perform a new stem cell operation on Schumacher to “regenerate his nervous system”.

According to further reports, the Covid-19 pandemic put an end to those plans.

Schumacher has been treated at home in a mansion in Switzerland since September 2014, and former Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa revealed he remains in a “difficult phase”.

Schumacher's son Mick, also a Formula 1 driver, said in 2022: “I would give anything to talk to Dad.” Photo / Getty Images

F1 journalist Roger Benoit, a friend of Schumacher, has claimed the 54-year-old’s case is one “without hope” in a devastating update this week.

During an interview with Swiss newspaper Blick, he refused to elaborate on the specifics of Schumacher’s condition, referring to a rare 2022 interview in which Schumacher’s son Mick said: “I would give anything to talk to Dad.”

“This sentence says everything about how his father has been doing for over 3500 days,” Benoit said. “A case without hope.’”

Mick Schumacher drove in Formula 1 for Haas in 2021 and 2022 and is now a reserve driver for Mercedes and McLaren.

He said in 2022: “I think Dad and me, we would understand each other in a different way now.

“We would have had much more to talk about, and that is where my head is most of the time, thinking that would be so cool. I would give up everything just for that.”