Game over

The average lap time for all those drivers across those 5 laps are all within about half a second, what exactly do you mean?

How about we talk a little about the long stints (small race simulations) done by the drivers in FP2 for the Bahrain GP?

They are very representative for the race, as they are at the same time, with the tires that will be used most and with a reasonably full tank.

I have the times of an F1 team in my hands, which has the times of everyone. These times that appear on the internet are often not accurate and worse, they do not follow the standard that teams follow. One of the items is to discard a lap or more of the stint when the driver catches a slow opponent in front, or runs the entire straight past someone, as these things (and others) distort the interpretation of the stint.

I can say that Oscar Piastri had a very strong “valid” long stint, it was impressive! People still don't know how to properly read these long stints, but he did better than Verstappen and Perez.

Mercedes tends to do long stints with more fuel than Reds (Ferrari) and Bulls. If that was the case, they did well too.

Sainz was much better than Percival in the long stint, which I consider valid.

Alonso was consistent, but was a little worse than Piastri, Mercedes and Red Bull.

All of this is valid for the race, but not definitive, as all teams change the setup from today to tomorrow.

For qualifying, these stints are worth little, or almost nothing. In qualifying, Red Bull was not as dominant as in the race last year.

Therefore, I say that the classification is still open. Tomorrow in FP3 we will have a much better idea.

Yeah those times alone don't exactly show Max with the advantage.