interesting article in autosport about schumi, apart from the obvious of him being older and out of practice in a current F1 car there's also the problem of the merc having understeer when he's well known for liking (possibly even requiring) a "pointy" car, certainly in his his first year at ferrari in a car who's designer had a history of producing chasis with slight understeer he was not happy, and also his chassis was damaged in australia and despite being repaired as best as possible the damage which was underneath towards the rear is felt to have been allowing a bit of flex which may have been causing the lack of slow speed traction he was complaining about.
whilst his qualifying hasn't been great his race performances aren't that bad, first race 1 place behind rosberg,second race caught in T1 incident, pitted and continued with damaged car, third race retired after 10 laps due to loose wheel, fourth race struggled but as in third race team believe the chassis damage in race two was compramising performance.
we'll begin to know how how he's doing after the next race, merc are introducing a longer wheelbase to allow them to generate better front end downforce (though bridgestone are warning that it's easier to overload the internal air volume of the fronts now with them being narrower) and he'll have the undamaged test chassis so should have no traction issues, certainly if he's not competative with his team mate at monaco there will be a lot of questions being asked.
what's also interesting is that his ex team mates are all saying the same thing, namely that whilst he is untouchable in his ability to help develope an engine being remarkable sentsitive to the slightest change in the power delivery, he is not especially gifted at developing the car and had to rely on his team mates and test drivers to provide the feedback the engineers required about new parts etc. irving takes great delight in telling how schumacher discarded a new front wing as being no imporvement over the current one only for irving to prove it was substantially faster.
at benetton he had a pointy car which was fast, at ferrari he had a full test team who could drive huge distances ontheir own test track developing parts and who were chosen for their level of feedback. at both of these he had access to his teammates' setups and telemetry and the car was developed to suit him.
at merc in 2010 he has limited test milage and equal status with a teamate who is actually quite comfortable with a car that has slight understeer. unless merc produce a car that's adaptable enough to accomadate both driving styles, one driver or the other is going to be compramised and unless the next update fundementally alters the cars charectoristics, that driver that is going to be schumacher.