Battle between Verstappen and Perez is on: 'Mexican was in fact faster'

Red Bull Racing made an excellent impression during the winter test in Bahrain last weekend, everyone agrees. Max Verstappen was in the lead with his fast times on Friday and Sunday. Lawrence Barretto of Formula1.com argues that teammate Sergio Perez was actually faster than the Dutchman.

Barretto compared both the long runs and qualifying runs of Verstappen and Perez by also taking into account the speed of the track at that moment. The conditions during the runs of Verstappen were much more favourable than Perez.

"When you make allowances for the track conditions – Perez did his run at a time when the track was around 2.86s slower than it was when Verstappen did his – the Mexican was in fact 0.6s quicker than his team mate", says Barretto.

Also during their fast runs, the track Perez drove on was slower, by about 1.4 seconds. Taking that into account, the Mexican's fastest lap was about a tenth faster. Barretto bases his assumptions for the 'speed of the track' on the average lap times driven by all drivers.