I travelled to Michael Schumacher’s Majorca mansion – this is the heartbreaking news I learned about wheelchair-bound F1 legend’s physical state, the fake stories around his daughter’s wedding and the inner circle allowed to visit him

It is picture-perfect as the winter sun shines on Sierra de Tramontana, Majorca’s most idyllic mountain range. The Mediterranean lies below, some white waves blown up on this windy day. A wild goat, brown with a black stripe, and native to the island, a Cabra Mallorquina – minds his or her own business on the roadside.

Some 30 minutes by car from the capital Palma leads you on a long and winding climb to the upmarket estate of Las Brisas, near Andratx, on the south-western tip of Majorca.

There at the very, very top of the hill, perched on the precipice, is the finest of all the houses you have passed, nestled in two culs-de-sac.

Huge trees shroud it. There are black doors on the couple of sides of the building that allow access. There is a neat stone wall and towering trees. You can see nothing inside. You ring the bell, and nobody answers.

A security guard, however, emerges: a genial Spanish guy in his twenties with SEGURIDAD written on the back of his head-to-toe black uniform. The CCTV cameras, stationed high in the air to ward off the curious, you presume, have alerted him to my having arrived in the street, courtesy of a taxi. The security guard comes out from seemingly nowhere, and we speak amicably.

I asked him who owned this grand house. He shrugs his shoulders. He smiles, apologetically. He says he would rather speak about the weather. He was professionally tight-lipped. We both knew the answer anyway and were equally aware of the identity of the sporting icon for whom he worked.

For Michael Schumacher, shielded from the world, was sitting inside the £30million mansion.

The word ‘sitting’ is used with emphasis. For, after extensive conversations with several well-placed sources, Daily Mail Sport understands that the Formula One legend, who hit his head and suffered life-changing brain damage while skiing in Meribel in the French Alps just over 12 years ago, is not bedridden.

Alas, that happy news is perhaps the most positive medical bulletin our investigation can disclose. Aged 57, he cannot walk. He is, instead, pushed around the mansion in a wheelchair by nurses and therapists, part of a round-the-clock medical retinue that costs tens of thousands of pounds a week.

Schumacher, who married his devoted wife Corinna in 1995, was always a reserved family man despite his public profile on the F1 race track, where he won 91 races, securing 68 poles and 155 podiums that reputedly helped elevate to him to being the world’s first billionaire sportsman in his heyday at Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton has since equalled the great German on seven titles, and he has won more races (105), but the man whom Hamilton replaced at Mercedes set 77 fastest laps and, even though it is 14 years since he stopped racing, nobody has beaten that record.

Other than for a small clutch of trusted family and friends, in keeping with Corinna’s wishes, Schumacher has not been seen since the dreadful accident of December 29, 2013. No picture of him in his distressed state has emerged – despite the fraudulent attempts of former staff, who were later imprisoned, to sell images of him to the dark web (to which disheartening subject we will return).

Reports suggested that he attended the marriage of his daughter Gina, a successful equestrian, to Iain Bethke in 2024, allegedly at the same Villa Yasmin mansion from which I report, the sumptuous property bought by Corinna from Real Madrid president Florentino Perez in 2017 as their ‘holiday home’ – replete, if claims are right with at least one swimming pool and a helipad, and, categorically, stunning views over the Med.

But it appears to be the case that Schumacher was not at Gina’s wedding. Again, his privacy was respected.

Though the Schumachers regularly stay in Majorca, their Balearics retreat is not their main base, I am reliably told. Their main residence remains their £50m house in Gland, Switzerland, a town of some 13,000 on the banks of Lake Geneva.

Only a few visitors, perhaps three or four outside the family, are welcomed to either house. His former Ferrari team principal Jean Todt is one of the trusted few. The pair of them watch grands prix together. Todt, who sees Michael as a second son, declares nothing about his former driver’s condition, other than to say he ‘fights on’.

He is as aware as anyone of the need for Schumacher’s dignity to be respected. His star driver, with whom he wrote a glittering chapter for Ferrari at the start of the century, was always a proud man – and somewhat indignant in his distinguished and often controversial career.

Schumacher baulked at suggestions that there were any blots on his sportsmanship, such as when he collided with Damon Hill in winning his first title with Benetton in 1994 or being disqualified from the championship three years later in combat with Jacques Villeneuve or parking up at Rascasse corner in Monaco to prevent Fernando Alonso beating his qualifying time in 2006.

Despite these blemishes, Schumacher remains exalted in the sport and not least at Ferrari, where he was seen as the consummate team player, the working-class boy from Hurth, North-Rhine Westphalia. He never forgot the interests of his most junior mechanics, caring about them and their families, working into the late hours, breaking bread with them. He bought his expensive team members Swiss watches to acknowledge their part in helping him to championship successes. This selflessness and loyalty feeds into the respect he is now shown by his closest circle.

One rumour was that he is suffering from Locked-in Syndrome, also known as pseudocoma, a neurological condition that allows someone, fully conscious, to be aware of everything that is happening but unable to respond other than for blinking.

Tragically, I was told by several sources that even this bleak verdict is inaccurate. ‘You can’t be sure whether he understands everything because he cannot tell anyone,’ someone close to the scene told me on the promise of anonymity. ‘The feeling is that he understands some of the things going on around him, but probably not all of them.’

The Schumachers’ long-time spokeswoman Sabine Kehm, a former respected journalist with the highbrow German newspaper Die Welt, was approached for comment but declined to offer an update on Schumacher’s medical condition, as she always has. She, I believe, is someone, along with Ferrari’s technical director Ross Brawn, who has seen Michael since his accident. Neither has ever revealed whether this is the case. Omerta rules. If friends blab, they are no longer friends.

Kehm, however, did speak out last year over an attempted blackmail threat about releasing details of his health condition to the public.

Three men, including Schumacher’s former bodyguard Markus Fritsche, were convicted of trying to leak hard drives containing confidential pictures, videos and medical records stolen from a computer.

A nightclub bouncer called Yilmaz Tozturkan, and his IT savvy son Daniel Lins, denied blackmail and insisted they were offering the Schumacher family a ‘business deal’.

In February last year, Tozturkan was jailed for three years, but is free on €10,000 bail. Lins, who denied involvement, was handed a six-month suspended sentence. Fritsche was given a two-year suspended sentence for his part in the despicable breach of trust.

Kehm told the German paper Bild: ‘I find it extremely malicious that they want to exploit the suffering like this, so it’s clear why the family is taking a tougher stance towards their loved ones.

‘Corinna is watching this with bitterness.’

But on a few brighter notes for Corinna, she is due to go to America soon to support the endeavours of her son Mick, who is starting out in the US’s premier motor-racing series, the highly dangerous IndyCar, driving car No 47 Dallara-Honda for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

A former Ferrari Academy driver, he raced in Formula One for Haas for two seasons. Again, he never provides updates on his father’s health, but he has described him as an ‘idol’ and a ‘role-model’.

Aged 14, Mick was with Michael when the terrible accident occurred, with snow too scarce to protect him from the rocks that caused him so much harm. But he is too young, I think, to have seen his father ski with aplomb as the regular winner of the downhill competition on the last day of the Philip Morris-funded skiing holiday at Madonna di Campiglio in the Italian Dolomites; Ferrari literally took over the town for a week.

Journalists were invited to join the Ferrari throng, and I was one of them at some stages over the years, and the rule was that we reported the official stuff, the press conferences – and all the rest, the fun elements over endless apres-ski gnocchi and drinks, was off limits.

But I am sure I am reporting within the framework of that understanding all these years on in saying with nostalgic, though poignant, delight that Michael, the normal human being, would contentedly knock back Bacardi and Cokes afterwards as he let his hair down, in a way he could rarely do in semi-public.

Two other items for Schumacher fans to celebrate find their anniversary in 2026. He joined Ferrari 30 years ago and retired from there in 2006, his announcement made in high drama as he won the Italian Grand Prix that season in Monza.

It is certain these landmarks will be recognised in the name of the Ferrari luminary sitting at the top of the hill.