How good is Schumacher Jr?

The Indian covers band is in full swing, belting out a stream of the kind of inoffensive wedding-rock fare you get at social occasions the world over.

It's the post-season party for the MRF Challenge, which earlier that day had its final round on the track just up the bumpy, dusty, insane-traffic road from central Chennai.

A bunch of mainly European and Latin American youngsters are veering around the floor, backslapping and manhugging each other. Among them is 16-year-old Mick Schumacher, being jostled about by his mates and peers, trying not to spill his drink.

"Look at him - he's just like a normal young kid who wants to enjoy himself. It's great to see him having fun," says a veteran motorsport observer. Moments later Peter Kaiser - the long-time right-hand man to the Schumacher family - emerges from the throng and taps his watch in a 'ready-to-go?' motion.

Mick acquiesces and seems to have left the building, but within moments the band has invited all the drivers up on stage for an ill-advised and discordant singalong, and back into the fray lurches their young German mate.

Observing is as close as we can get to Schumacher at the moment. It's understandable because, with the German tabloid media as renowned for their excesses as their British counterparts, the family and their management want to protect him - especially in this period of doubt concerning his seven-time world champion father's medical prognosis.

We don't want to put him on the spot by asking how his dad is; the only relevant questions about Michael are how he might have inspired and helped his son over the years in karts. But, for now, we have to respect the Schumacher clan's wishes.

The Schumacher name carries plenty of expectation with it - and attention © LAT

Even so, we can watch him on the track at close quarters, and talk to those who've worked with him.

"He's a fantastic young boy," asserts Frits van Amersfoort, whose Van Amersfoort Racing team ran Schumacher in last year's German Formula 4 Championship, his rookie season in car racing. "The team loved him. He's a really nice human being."

VAR's first contact with Schumacher came after he'd finished runner-up in the 2014 German Junior Karting series. "We gave the DMSB [German motorsport's governing body] the prize of a free simulator test for the guy who was second in the German championship," adds van Amersfoort. "That October I got a call from Peter Kaiser to say that Mick was interested in doing the simulator test, and of course I was happily surprised.

"Mick came on a Saturday, he was really surprised by my engineering force, especially by Rik [Vernooij, who was then running Max Verstappen in F3], and he was really enthusiastic so we started talking."

The partnership started in fairytale fashion, with Schumacher winning the reversed-grid race of the 2015 opening round at Oschersleben under the glare of the media spotlight. But here's the thing: he had only qualified 19th before battling through to ninth to earn his reversed-grid front-row spot.

Through the early half of the season it seemed that he found it tough to put it on the line in qualifying, but was a pretty good racer. Indeed, he didn't crack the top 10 in qualifying until the Nurburgring in August, but from then on made it seven times out of eight. A total of 11 points finishes gave him 10th in the championship.

OK, as van Amersfoort says, "through the year he did a lot of testing", but on the other hand some drivers were also competing in other championships.

"Mick is not the guy who steps in a race car and is blindingly fast from the beginning," he adds, "but the good thing is that when you give him the time he will get there. The first race weekend was a lucky shot, getting that reversed-grid race, but he did it [stayed calm] and it was really fun to see this. He's cool in his head - the only thing he lacked was experience."

Van Amersfoort, left, confesses he is gutted to have lost Schumacher for 2016 © LAT

How did he handle the attention?

"Mick doesn't really - or at least we couldn't see it - feel the pressure from the press," says van Amersfoort. "He's so much in clear air, and that's one reason why they live in Switzerland. He doesn't give a damn about it - he does what he wants to do. The pressure is on the people around him."

By the end of last year, it was apparent that Schumacher was on his way to Prema Powerteam for his second season in F4. While van Amersfoort says "he's a championship contender", Prema chief Rene Rosin plays down any such expectation.

"Like always, everybody is fighting for the top," he says. "The main thing is to get him into the best position to perform, but we will take things race by race."

It's early days at Prema for Schumacher, who speaks Italian as well as English (peppered with numerous 'for sures'), but he has already tested with the team at Monza, Mugello and Barcelona. "He's very friendly with everybody," adds Rosin, "just like a normal guy really."

But what sort of a driver is he? "He's smooth, very technical, very precise - really dedicated 100 per cent to what he's doing," says Rosin.

All aspects of those impressions are backed up by those involved in Schumacher's MRF Challenge outing. Indeed, series ambassador and ex-Formula 1 racer Narain Karthikeyan suggests that Schumacher's style would better suit an F3 car.

"He tends to carry a lot of speed to the apex," says Karthikeyan, who these days races in Japan's Super Formula series. "On new tyres, it was obvious visibly that he was carrying more to the apex than other drivers."

MRF Challenge offered a chance to assess Schumacher away from German spotlight

Schumacher had arrived in India earlier in the week, Karthikeyan taking him around the bumpy, challenging circuit before bringing him to the pit garage.

"He went to the car, and was looking at the floor of the car and asking some really technical questions, which I thought was quite mature for his age," says Karthikeyan.

"He actually drove with the anti-rollbar disconnected because he likes not such a sharp front. That was just the characteristics of the tyre and his driving style - it suited him better, and that was probably the bumpiest track he'll ever drive in his life!"

Karthikeyan was also impressed that, on a circuit that's hard to overtake on, Schumacher "is one of the guys who tried a move. He made a lunge - he went off, but at least he tried."

That was to the detriment of Tatiana Calderon, who he took off twice in the same race. "I've no idea what he was thinking," a puzzled Calderon said after the race. "The first collision, he was way back and he wouldn't even have made the corner. I turned in and felt something hit me. The second, we were side by side and he never really made the corner and touched my left front."

Realistically, it's a sign of a driver learning his craft. The moves were bungled, but in one engineer's view it was less a case of too ambitious than of not being decisive enough in his manoeuvres.

"His racecraft impressed me at least as much as his speed," says 2013-14 MRF champion Rupert Svendsen-Cook, who was at Chennai as manager-coach to Indian racer Tarun Reddy. "He's not at all shy to go for a move; really committed.

"On a circuit like that, you really saw who was on it and who wasn't. This is probably the last of the generation of cars with a sequential gearbox that requires you to heel-and-toe. I thought it might show up drivers like Schumacher and Harrison Newey [son of Red Bull tech chief Adrian], who are used to flappy paddles from F4, but in all fairness his gearchanges were crisp and he looked very confident."

Those around Schumacher have a lot of time for his attitude - sound familiar?

Certainly, as he has with VAR and Prema, Schumacher made a great impression with the MRF team. "People probably have this perception of 'sons of', but to me Mick is just a racing driver, no different to anybody else," says series coordinator David Lowe.

"He's very diligent in everything he does, and that includes taking the time to get to know not just the engineers but also the mechanics.

"When he's out of the car he wants to help the mechanics to an extent I've rarely seen, and that's brilliant. The only other person I've seen like that is Nico Rosberg, when he was with us in Macau [Lowe formerly engineered at the Carlin Motorsport F3 team] and he took the spanners out and helped them put a new corner on."

Is this an influence of his father, who was very hands-on and was himself a capable mechanic?

"It must be," says Lowe. "He very much wants to be his own person, but these people have influences. Harri Newey goes around looking at all the wings and bodywork lines and you think, 'I wonder where that came from!'"

It's easy to be cynical about a kid who wants to follow in his dad's footsteps in sport, and Schumacher has unquestionably been given an easier start to his life than many. But we should balance that against the horror he must live with of witnessing his father's terrible accident, when aged just 14. No one would wish that on anyone, and by all accounts he has grown into a remarkably well-rounded lad.

"All the people around him are nice," says van Amersfoort. "His mother is a lovely lady, so is Sabine [Kehm, manager] - they all work hard for Mick but also acknowledge the team. I feel really shit that he's gone [to Prema]. I can't hide my disappointment!"

But is he good enough? Svendsen-Cook also saw him in the Barcelona F4 test in December, and says: "He was the standout with all the top drivers from the German and Italian teams there. From the first laps he looked another level to his competition."

"He has the right genes and the right approach," offers Karthikeyan. "But to say whether he can do, say, F1... it's just too early, to be honest. All the fast guys from the crop of the drivers, are they good enough? Maybe. I don't know.

"But he's a nice young man, very mature in his approach and methodical. If there's a chance of anyone going to the top, he's probably one who'll have a good career."