Could it really be that in just two weeks the massive advantage Mercedes had during the Australian Grand Prix weekend has been so rapidly eroded?
Friday practice at Sepang certainly suggested that the gap has closed, even if intuitively the 0.061s that covered pacesetter Nico Rosberg's Mercedes, Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull-Renault at the end of the day seems too good to be true.
The four fastest cars over a single lap - Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and Williams - all on their fresh-tyre run on the quicker, medium-compound Pirelli rubber, were covered by just two tenths of a second.