Taking into account the three years Schumacher spent in retirement, and the penalty in Monaco 2006 when he was sent to the back of the grid, the seven-times champion produced his worst qualifying performance since the inaugural Turkish Grand Prix in August 2005.

The 41-year-old will start from an abysmal 15th on the grid for tomorrow’s European Grand Prix, with team-mate Nico Rosberg not faring too much better as he is down in 12th.

David Coulthard described his display as “tentative” and “sloppy”, whilst Eddie Jordan suggested the German “is clearly not at ease with himself in Formula One”.

The former team boss added: “If it was any other driver, other than the great Michael Schumacher, we’d be looking for his head, or most of the press would be looking for his head, because clearly his performance in the past couple of races has been very poor.”

Schumacher, though, is not going anywhere as he said: “I can handle the pain. Come on guys - I’ve been around long enough to know I’ve dealt with much worse pain.

“I’m not here with a short-term view, that I just look from race to race and I have to have a single result.

“From my point of view we have a three-year programme. Obviously we thought we would be closer, nearer, in a better situation this year.

“But that has not been the case so we have to understand, work our way through, as I did in the past. That’s what I’m here for. It’s part of the process. Sure I’m not happy and excited about being P15, which is natural.

“But once the progress comes, and I’m sure it will come, then you get rewarded.”

Asked if the criticism hurt or whether it made him determined to do better, he replied: “Neither, nor.

“I know what’s going on and I care about what is real and what I know and have to worry about.

“Once we can solve our problems then there is reason to believe we can do much better, and even win races this year.”

Failure to get to grips with the tyres is primarily being blamed as the problem, an issue that afflicted Schumacher in the last race in Canada a fortnight ago.

Team boss Ross Brawn, who like Schumacher has enjoyed the highs and lows Formula One has to offer, concedes the team are going through a rough patch, but is convinced they will come out the other side.

“It’s the pain that makes the pleasure so much better,” said Brawn. “Having been in this business so long you know you’re going to have days and periods like this.

“It’s impossible to be consistently at the top, and consistently fastest. You can’t do it, so these are the periods when you have to show your strengths.

“But it is a pain we put ourselves through because that’s the nature of the business, and if you can’t handle this pain then you shouldn’t be involved.”

Schumacher’s fall from grace has prompted suggestions this weekend Mercedes had spoken to Renault’s Robert Kubica about a potential drive next year.

But a dismissive Brawn added: “We haven’t spoken to Robert Kubica. I spoke to him at Brawn GP a year ago when we were looking at the future, but we haven’t spoken to him since then.

“There’s no discussions going on, we’re very happy with Michael, we’ve got to sort the car out, that’s the main issue.

“I’m confident that when we get the technical package together our drivers are going to succeed.”