There has been much criticism of the seven time world champion's comeback after four races, as he trails his teammate Nico Rosberg's points tally by 40 points and has been outqualified on every occasion so far.

With results published on Thursday by the German news agency SID, the Dortmund-based German market research company Promit said 63.3 per cent of the respondents classified Schumacher's return a mistake.

Only 33.5 per cent had a positive opinion about the 41-year-old's comeback at the wheel of a Mercedes.

"Maybe he has lost his feeling for driving during the three years of his retirement," Schumacher's Benetton teammate Jos Verstappen wrote in his latest column in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

"What we are now seeing is that Schumacher is an ordinary man of flesh and blood and that even he cannot conduct magic," he added.