But despite care he is receiving, friends are still cautious about his future

Michael Schumacher on a ski trip with his wife Corinna in 2003. No expense has been spared in treating the F1 star since a skiing accident at the end of last year

On Michael Schumacher's bedside table is a gold cross that he gave to his son Mick, 15, eight years ago. Next to it is an ornate hairbrush, a present to daughter Gina-Maria, 17, when she was a small child. Near them, spread out in a row, is an array of good luck charms that the Formula 1 star wore during his races.

There is an amulet given to him by one of his racing team – and there is a Dzi bead, fashioned from quartz, which is said to protect its owner from 'magic, misfortune and illness'. His wife Corinna wears a matching stone on a gold chain around her neck. She tells friends it gives her hope that one day her husband will 'walk, talk and feel again'.

It is a hope she has been nurturing since last December, when the seven-times world champion driver suffered devastating head injuries when he skied at high speed into rocks in Meribel, France.

Five weeks ago, hopes for the 45-year-old star were raised when he was moved from a Lausanne rehabilitation centre to the extraordinary custom-built clinic in the grounds of his £35 million mansion in Gland, on the shores of Switzerland's Lake Geneva.

All summer, construction work continued on the clinic, which has been specifically designed to sit elegantly alongside the luxurious mansion, which boasts 40 bedrooms, several private cinemas and a helicopter landing pad.

To the casual onlooker the clinic appears little more than a sympathetic extension to the Schumacher home.

Inside, however, it is a state-of-the-art medical facility staffed round the clock by a 15-strong team who have been specially trained by the Lausanne clinic to care for the man widely regarded as the greatest racing driver of all time.

An aerial view of the family's £35million mansion in Switzerland, where Mr Schumacher's wife Corrina is having a clinic built on the estate (top left)

No expense has been spared. The weekly bill for equipment and staff – which includes physiotherapists to massage his atrophying limbs, doctors, nutritionists, nurses and neurological experts – is estimated to be more than £100,000.

Strict security ensures no photographs of the racing star are taken –carers must hand in their mobile telephones when they report for duty and an array of tents have been constructed to prevent long-lens paparazzi shots of Schumacher when he is moved outside, as he is from time to time.

Inside, for hours each day, Corinna sits amid the whirring machines and medical tubes, talking softly to her husband.

But for all the intensive treatment, the devoted nursing care and the charms and good luck tokens, the tragic reality is that Schumacher, one of the world's wealthiest sportsmen, has made little improvement since he fell on the Meribel slopes, cracking his head on a boulder, while skiing with his son.

In spite of all the optimistic bulletins released by his management – which talk of 'steady progress' and 'continued hope' – Schumacher, who was superbly fit at the time of his accident, exists in a twilight world in which he has barely any grasp of what is going on around him.

Michael Schumacher being airlifted to hospital after his accident on the slopes of Meribel in France at the end of last year

Since being brought out of an induced coma last month, it is believed he is in a state of what is termed 'minimal consciousness', in which he can briefly move his eyes towards persons or objects, and can answer simple questions by fluttering his eyelids and making small nods with his head. He also experiences sleeping and waking cycles and has been known to react to loud sounds with a startled look.

But he remains immobile and is unable to follow instructions, has no speech or other forms of communication and has no purposeful movement of his limbs. He is surrounded by tubing, hooked up to complex machines that feed him, enable him to breathe, remove waste from his body and monitor vital signs.

Each day, Schumacher is massaged for long hours to stimulate muscle mass and is assessed by the hour to see if his awareness of his environment is increasing, waning or static.

Friends have voiced their concerns about hopes being raised for his future. Sabine Kehm, Schumacher's manager, recently announced that he was no longer in a coma and was on 'the long process of recovery', and claimed he was communicating with his wife and children.

But the statement left Dr Gary Hartstein, a former medical delegate for the Formula 1 World Championship who has known the driver since his early racing days, deeply unsettled. Now Clinical Professor of Anaesthesia and Emergency Medicine at the University of Liège Hospital in Belgium, he insists the reality is that Schumacher's chances of regaining any semblance of normality are virtually non-existent and has warned fans to prepare for the worst.

'We are told, with what seems to be a bit of a triumphal air, that Michael is no longer in a coma,' he says.

The world is witnessing the F1 star's long goodbye

Pointing out that the coma had been artificial, to protect the driver's brain, and he had been medically brought out if it, he added: 'This is not news. I cannot help but think this is highly cynical use of language, using the truth to convey an impression that is almost certainly false.'

Dr Hartstein has always been critical of the virtual news black-out surrounding Schumacher's condition. When he heard of Ms Kehm's announcement last month that the driver was showing moments of consciousness, he was unconvinced.

'I cannot help but think that if Michael had emerged at all from the minimally conscious state we would be told that he is having problems expressing himself and will work hard to get better,' he says, 'or that he is having to learn to walk, read and write all over again. This all leaves a very bad taste in my mouth and huge sadness for Michael's family.

'As time goes on it becomes less and less likely that Michael will emerge to any significant extent.'

Insistent that the racing driver was probably still, in effect, in a coma, he added: 'Life expectancy for a comatose patient who does not improve neurologically is measured in months to a relatively few years.' The world, he said, was witnessing the 'long goodbye' of its greatest racing star.

Schumacher is a seven-time world champion and is widely regarded as the greatest F1 driver of all time

His bleak assessment will come as a blow to Schumacher's legion of fans and fellow racing drivers. Such has been the secrecy surrounding his true condition, that the majority still believe he is, albeit slowly, on the road to recovery.

Of course it is hugely difficult to determine the exact state of his condition. But a family source backs up Dr Hartstein's claim that there is very little improvement.

Yet, the decision of the unendingly devoted Corinna to build the new clinic is a powerful statement of hope. The complex also contains a small home for her husband's father Rolf who is leaving his home in Germany to be near his son.

But as well as a loving and compassionate act by Corinna, some specialists believe it could be of some genuine medical benefit too. Professor Peter Vajkoczy, who heads the neurosurgical clinic of the world-renowned Charité Hospital in Berlin, believes it could prompt a small turning point in Schumacher's long battle. 'If financial resources allow for someone to create their own home rehabilitation facility complete with gym, and to bring the necessary medical staff and therapists to it, then that is certainly a [turning] point,' he insists.

While for Schumacher's family hope remains eternal, the reality for Corinna, Gina-Maria and Mick is that Schumacher will probably – more strident medical observers say almost certainly – not be coming back to them as anything like the man they have known.

As one who has been a friend of the family for 25 years said: 'Corinna is happy at the progress he has made so far and optimistic that much more can be achieved. She is counting the successes one by one and ignoring the likelihood he will make anything other than a full recovery.

'He didn't die in the accident and he didn't die during the two emergency operations that followed it. He came out of the coma and he has had periods of awakening where he is able to make the smallest of nods.

'He was deemed well enough to be released from the hospital and may be fit enough to sit in a wheelchair by summer's end. All of this is positive and Corinna takes each small dose of good news as it comes.

'The question remains, however, about how much improvement can be expected in the coming months and years. Will he speak again? Will he walk again? Will he be able to feed and dress himself? The doctors don't know. No one can know. The probability is that he will never be the man he was before the accident. That much is starkly clear.'

A recent source of hope for the Schumacher family is their contact with Croatian doctors Darko Chudy and Vedran Deletis who have developed a revolutionary microchip-implanting technique that they believe could help Michael walk and talk again. They have already had some limited success with a Croatian teenager who suffered a similar accident.

In the meantime, Corinna and her children can but sit by Schumacher's bedside and hope, reading and re-reading the messages of goodwill from his friends.

Lewis Hamilton wrote to him: 'Dear Michael, You are always in my prayers. Prayers of hope that you pull through this difficult time.'

Jenson Button wrote: 'When I think of Michael Schumacher I think of two things. The first is one of my earliest memories of being in Formula 1 driving out of the pit lane in Melbourne and seeing Michael's red Ferrari ahead of me scattering the leaves as he drove beneath the trees at the approach to turn three. The second thing I think about is that familiar red car snaking about in my mirrors. Michael was such a formidable racer... relentlessly competitive. Always there for him.'