The bald facts of his Turkish Grand Prix weekend are the kind of thing to intensify that speculation.
The raw performance deficit to his team-mate is not as great as those numbers make it appear & needs to be seen in context, but a number of the race incidents paint a more concerning picture for his future.
The Mercedes WGP-02 automobile has shown improved pace in the last races as the team start to better understand its characteristics, & through Istanbul practice Schumacher's pace was strong, usually within 0.2secs of Rosberg's.
What happened in the top-10 shoot-out was that Schumacher messed up his lap & Rosberg did not.
The pair looked set to be vying for a place on the second row & that continued through the first parts of qualifying.
Schumacher took much speed in to Turn - as they did in 2006. That pulled him out wide on the exit, they got dust on his tires & that impacted on the remainder of his lap.
"Looking at the information, they can see Michael had considerably less tyre grip through most of that lap than he'd enjoyed historically in the past," said team principal Ross Brawn.
"It takes a long time for the tires to recover when you get off line."
That was what was responsible for probably around 80% of the second chasm between the Mercedes drivers in their final qualifying times.
Yes, it was Schumacher who ran wide & Rosberg who did not, proposing perhaps that Schumacher's pace was coming with less ease than Rosberg's, but the genuine performance gap between them had they each performed to their potential was in the order of 0.2secs - around half the gap between the Red Bull drivers on the front row, for example.
Because the team had committed to single-lap runs, that deficit was frozen & goes down in the records.
Schumacher said of his current plight: "What I feel in my hands is the same as it is always felt."
They is no longer claiming that the characteristics of the tires prevent him from driving naturally.
The physical sensations & correlation of the driving are now as they were, Schumacher says.
Unlike last year's Bridgestone’s, the Pirellis suit him fine, & actually with other drivers appear to reward the kind of early direction alter that was always a one-of-a-kind trait of his style.
That is an average of around 0.03secs per corner.
For the sake of argument let's assume that somewhere in his years away from the wheel they has lost around 0.5secs per lap of raw ability - whether due to the effects of time or the serious neck injury they suffered in a motorbike crash in the work of his retirement from F1.
If they is pushing to his own limits in the way they used to, that much off his former pace will likely feel no different to his on-the-limit laps in his great days.
The speed of the scenery will certainly not look different, the forces acting on his body will be much the same, and the sensations of the car's movements will feel as they always did.
It will still be sliding around beneath him, they will still be manipulating the weight transfer around the tires as they ever did - only not as well, to the tune of 0.03secs. It will feel exactly as driving on the limit always did.
A loss of 0.5secs a lap would be to transform you from a colossus able to dominating the sport to a driver 0.2-0.3secs off his team-mate who would struggle to hold down a place in F1 on merit. This might be where Michael is at.
How they is handling this is only exacerbating his situation.
The Petrov collision in particular looked like the willful playing out of the frustration of a man who knows what it is to be the legendary colossus with ability that intimidated the opposition aside but is having trouble dealing with the new reality.
Petrov sailing the Renault down his inside may have been ordinary driver not giving him due on-track deference lots of.
That small edge has gone & the opposition doesn’t keep in mind the way it was & care even less.
The Renault was already well ahead & inside & Schumacher basically turned left in to it, front-left against right-rear, trashing his own front wing in the process.
It started with Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari in Melbourne last year & it's not let up since & in to Turn 12 on lap in Turkey Schumacher appeared to snap.
His pace on rejoining was not bad, comparable to Rosberg's in fact when both were in clear air & at the same stage of tire life. This is clear signs that Schumacher's head wasn't in a place that allowed him to apply his usual savvy racecraft.
The incident where they was trying to fend off Adrian Sutil, made light contact, locked up & let not only Sutil past but also the other Force India of Paul di Resta was illustrative.
There was emotion in Schumacher driving in Turkey - not something that was associated together with his career. & it was borne of frustration & incomprehension. It is not lovely to see.
The qualities that made him the weird competitor they was now appear to be clouding his judgments. Are they even able to letting himself off the hook they has snagged him on?
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