Seven-time F1 champion Michael Schumacher is set to return to the sport for the European Grand Prix in Valencia after Ferrari confirmed that the German driver is its choice to replace the injured Felipe Massa.

Schumacher, the most successful driver in the history of the sport, quit F1 at the end of the 2006 season but will now come out of retirement to make a comeback as Massa continues to recover from the injuries he sustained in his accident at the Hungaoring.

In a short statement, Ferrari revealed that Schumacher will shortly begin a specific training programme, which will be followed by confirmation that he will partner Kimi Raikkonen in the Spanish race.

The news comes just a day after Schumacher’s manager Willi Weber said he was ‘200 per cent sure’ that the most successful F1 driver of all time wouldn’t be on the grid in Spain.

However, Schumacher said he ‘couldn’t ignore the unfortunate situation’ that Ferrari now finds itself in following Massa’s accident and has agreed to make a return after meeting with Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and team boss Stefano Domenicali.

“The most important thing first: thank God, all news concerning Felipe are positive,” Schumacher said. “I wish him all the best again.

“I was meeting this afternoon with Stefano Domenicali and Luca di Montezemolo and together we decided that I will prepare myself to take the place of Felipe. Though it is true that the chapter Formula 1 has been closed for me since long and completely, it is also true that for loyalty reasons to the team I cannot ignore that unfortunate situation.

“As the competitor I am, I very much look forward to facing this challenge.”

The hospital treating injured Ferrari driver Felipe Massa has offered a more serious assessment of the Brazilian’s condition, countering the Scuderia’s claim that the news was ‘positive’ following emergency surgery.

Massa was struck on the helmet by a piece of suspension shed by Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn GP machine towards the end of the Q2 phase of the session. The blow knocked Massa unconscious and caused him to spear off the circuit and into the tyre barrier at high speed. Clearly hurt and unable to vacate the cockpit under his own power, Massa was extricated from the car by medical teams and taken, first, to the Hungaroring’s medical centre, before being airlifted to the AEK Hospital in nearby Budapest.

Ferrari’s post-qualifying statement only discussed the incident, but reported that the 28-year old had ‘undergone surgery’, and that ‘the outcome of the procedure was positive’..

However, while hospital sources confirmed that Massa would ‘remain under observation in intensive care’, it offered a graver assessment of the Brazilian’s condition, reporting that he was being kept sedated on a respirator.

“Massa’s condition is serious, life-threatening but stable,” Medical director Peter Bazso told a news conference, before confirming chief surgeon Lajos Zsiros’ belief that Massa would be brought out from the sedation on Sunday.

Felipe Massa has urged Ferrari’s fans not to give up on the team in the wake of its worst start to a Formula 1 campaign in almost three decades – with still no points on the board after the opening three races of 2009, and a potential podium fallen by the wayside in Shanghai at the weekend.

Having qualified a lowly eighth (Kimi Raikkonen) and 13th (Massa) for the Chinese Grand Prix – a race in which last year they had lined up second and third – the Scuderia’s luck did not improve any on Sunday. Both drivers skated off-piste during the initial safety car period before the action proper got underway, and would endure divergent fortunes from thereon in, with Massa’s rise roughly mirroring Raikkonen’s fall.

The Brazilian, indeed, was the architect of a strong performance, confounding his critics who had said he cannot drive in the wet by mastering the torrential conditions to fight his way up past a number of rivals – his team-mate included – and work his way into third place by the time the safety car appeared for the second time on lap 19 to allow for the debris from the Jarno Trulli/Robert Kubica coming-together to be cleared away.

On a fuel-heavy one-stop strategy, the 2008 world championship runner-up was looking good not only to register his first points of the year, but indeed possibly even a rostrum, travelling as much as three seconds a lap quicker than the sister scarlet machine. And then, just moments later, disaster struck.

“Obviously I’m very disappointed and a bit upset,” the 27-year-old reflected of the electrical problem that brought his charge to a premature conclusion, “but my motivation is still intact. All of us must work together to get out of this situation. The team is united and there is a real will to turn things around as soon as possible. We should quickly be getting some significant aerodynamic developments, but it’s true that we also have to sort out as soon as possible our reliability problems, because if we want to win, first we have to finish the races.

“Here, I was in with a good chance of getting on the podium. I was third and lapping at the same times as the leaders, even though I had enough fuel on-board to go for a one-stop. The car was going well, except when running behind the safety car; at those times, there were a few moments when the power seemed to drop. Then, without warning, the accelerator would not work and the car went quiet. I would say to our fans that they should not give up on us, as this is a difficult moment but the championship is still long.”

Raikkonen, for his part, enjoyed spirited tussles with fellow title-winner Lewis Hamilton and Scuderia Toro Rosso rookie Sébastien Buemi early on, but ultimately came off worst on both occasions as he seemed to increasingly struggle in the spray. Despite electing to switch from a two-stop strategy to just one in view of the weather, the Finn complained of grip and power issues throughout, and eventually slid down the order to just tenth spot at the chequered flag, more than 15 seconds shy of the last of the points-scoring positions.

“In the early stages, it wasn’t too bad,” the 17-time grand prix-winner revealed, “but then, after my stop, I lost grip from the tyres and I was no longer able to push as hard as I wanted, because it meant the car was sliding a lot. A few times the engine seemed to lose power, especially when I found myself close behind other cars, but then the problem went away on its own.

“Clearly the championship situation looks very difficult – we have made mistakes and we are not quick enough. In Barcelona, when we will have new aero parts, we should be able to pick up some of the grip we are lacking now. I am sure we can be competitive enough to win again, but this work will take time. The team is motivated – I’m sure of that – and we will all do our bit. Now it is easy to criticise, but we know how to turn things around.”

Indeed, the last time Ferrari began a season so badly was back in 1981, and the Maranello-based outfit has never gone through the first four races without troubling the scorers, meaning the pressure is on for Bahrain, both in terms of getting its challenge off the mark and also preserving the squad’s illustrious reputation. Though the F60 will remain largely unchanged for its trip to the desert kingdom, team principal Stefano Domenicali did evince the possibility of the return of KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems), dropped in China over reliability concerns.

“We are very annoyed about what happened to Felipe,” underlined the Italian. “He was driving an amazing race, when an electrical problem saw the engine die. He was third at the time and even though he had a heavy fuel load, he was lapping at the same time as the fastest and would have almost certainly finished the race on the podium.

“Kimi switched his strategy, going from a two to a one-stop, but he could not get higher than tenth. On his first set of tyres, his pace was reasonable, but with the second he suffered constantly from a lack of grip which kept him out of the points.

“The great shame is that at a time when technically we are not at our best, once again we failed to capitalise on circumstances. Now we look towards next weekend’s race in Bahrain in a realistic frame of mind – the car will be the same as here, even though we will look at running KERS again. In the meantime, we have to work intensively on getting the new aerodynamic components to the race track, when the European part of the season gets underway in Barcelona.”

“We embarked on the race with the two drivers on different strategies,” added chief race engineer Chris Dyer, “and with the rain and the safety car periods, we managed to get ourselves into a good position, especially with Felipe, who at one point was third with a lot of fuel on-board. Unfortunately, a software management problem meant the engine cut out and forced him to retire. It’s a real shame, because we could have got a good result.

“Right from the start, Kimi complained about the lack of visibility when following others and several times that the engine power was dropping due to the water, but above all he suffered with a lack of grip after his stop. In the meantime, we changed his strategy and he was unable to get any higher than tenth. Once again we’ve had reliability problems, which prevented us from picking up valuable points.”

Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo responds to suggestions the Scuderia should have seized the chance to sign up Fernando Alonso for next year, by insisting the team is ‘very happy’ with both Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen.

Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo has insisted that the Scuderia is ‘very happy’ with its driving line-up of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen, despite the latter having displayed indifferent form for much of the 2008 Formula 1 campaign.

It was suggested to di Montezemolo in the wake of Raikkonen’s poor performances for the majority of the season – the Finn having invariably appeared merely a shadow of the man who only twelve months previously lifted the drivers’ laurels for the first time in his career – and Fernando Alonso’s superb showings of late in the Renault, that perhaps Maranello had got the wrong combination for 2009.

The Italian, however, is adamant that not only does Ferrari have a line-up capable of securing constructors’ glory for the squad ahead of McLaren-Mercedes in the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos this weekend, but that Raikkonen and Massa are the right drivers to keep the Prancing Horse at the top of the F1 tree next year as well.

Raikkonen’s form has seemed to pick up in the last two grands prix, as he both out-qualified and out-raced Massa in Japan and China.

“These types of thoughts we had four years ago,” di Montezemolo confessed in an interview with Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport. “Now we are very happy.

“We are working on the title with a different driver to our champion of last year, and both of them are delivering to us the manufacturers’ title.

“If there is one aspect with which we have no problems, it is our drivers. When Raikkonen was having a difficult time in the second part of the season, Massa was in extraordinary form.”

Last month, Massa revealed that he and Raikkonen are not friends away from the circuit and have ‘no private relationship’, stating: ‘If we are together in a meeting, when it is finished he opens the door and is gone’