Why it isn’t just Red Bull’s lap times that have worried rivals

A cursory glance at the timesheets already pointed in that direction, with Sergio Perez having set the benchmark overall in the late flurry of lower fuel runs on the final evening as teams finally unlocked some potential.

In fact, it was only Guanyu Zhou’s glory run late on Friday to go top that prevented a clean sweep of Red Bull’s dominance over the three days.

Even away from the headline times, and instead digging deep in the long-run form – which is what really matters and what teams pay most attention to – it was clear that Red Bull seemed to have everything under control too.

The car’s reliability, apart from a minor niggle on day two, seemed spot on, and there was nothing to suggest that any of Perez and Max Verstappen’s rivals had looked a threat in terms of lap times over race simulation runs.

Red Bull’s motorsport advisor Helmut Marko told Sky Germany after the test: “Times, as we know in testing, are relative. We don’t know what the competition was like on fuel, so if they were heavier than us, then our time is relative. But it has been shown that we are reliable, that we are fast, at the front.

“Above all that, what makes us very optimistic is that both of Perez’s and Max’s long runs were clearly at least faster than those of the competition.”

Being the team to beat in testing does not, of course, guarantee anything when it comes to producing results on the weekend.

As Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur said on the final day: “I don’t remember who did the fastest lap time last year in Bahrain, but he was not on pole position for the race. And that was the same two years ago.”

However, analysing deeper how Red Bull’s test panned out, there are a few other aspects that have set alarm bells ringing for other teams in their hopes of leapfrogging F1’s world champion squad.

Effortless pace

Sometimes, the fastest F1 cars can be very tricky to drive at the limit, with only the very best drivers able to extract the most from them.

But from the very first moment that the RB19 hit the track in Bahrain, it appears to have been relatively straightforward for Verstappen and Perez to take it to the edge.

Early on, with other teams battling to find a good balance for their cars, Verstappen boasted about facing no dramas of his own.

“Every time I jumped in the car, I felt comfortable and could push instantly,” he said.

That seemed to be borne on day one of the…