“The situation is desperate. Every time the telephone goes, we know it could be the hospital to tell us that Jules is dead. But initially they said that the first 24 hours were crucial. Then it became the first 72 hours and here we are still with Jules, who is fighting.

“He will succeed in the most important qualifying lap of his life. He won’t give up, I’m sure of that.

“I can see it. I believe it. I speak to him. I know he can hear me. His doctors have told us that this is already a miracle, no one has ever survived such a serious accident. But Jules won’t give-up. His trainer Andrea says that if there is one person who can make it happen, with his will, it’s Jules.”

Philippe Bianchi, the father of Jules Bianchi has spoken to Italian sports paper La Gazzetta dello Sport about the plight of his son Jules, 25, who was injured in an accident with a course vehicle in the Japanese Grand Prix and remains in a critical but stable condition in Yokkaichi hospital in Japan.

“It’s tough. In a week the life of this family has been destroyed,” he says. “What are we doing here? Living a nightmare in a place very far from home. But when Jules gets a bit better we can transfer him, maybe to Tokyo and things will be a bit easier. But who knows when that will happen. If it will happen. We have no certainties, we just have to wait.

“The people here are lovely but no-one speaks English. ”

Philippe Bianchi also reveals that he is using Michael Schumacher’s accident as a reference point, “I was very sad when he got hurt. I kept wondering, like very one else ‘Why don’t they tell us more about how he is?’ But now I’m in the same position I understand. Everyone keeps asking me how Jules is but I can’t reply, there is no answer. It’s very serous, but he’s stable. One day he seems a bit better, other days bit worse. The doctors don’t say. The damage from the accident is very bad but we don’t know how it will evolve.

“Even with Schumacher it took months to come out of the coma. Jean Todt said he hopes Michael will one day be able to have a normal life. One day I hope we can say the same abut Jules.”

The Bianchi family were very touched by the show of support from the other F1 drivers in Sochi, forming a ‘circle of solidarity’ for Jules, where they formed up on the grid in a ring with arms around each other’s shoulders, facing inwards to only themselves, the ones who best understood. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Philippe Bianchi. “It touched us very deeply. We thank every one of them. So many of them have been in touch, written to me; Alonso, Vergne, Massa have given strong messages, Hamilton wrote me a beautiful email in which he says that if there is anything he can do, he’s there. Rossi and Marquez from Moto GP too.

“We are sure that all this love, this energy Jules can feel it, Marussia and Ferrari too.”

He says that he has not watched the amateur video of the accident and isn’t going to for now, “It would make me crazy. I need positive energy now.”