He might have finished fifth on the timesheets but as far as Max Verstappen is concerned it was a good pre-season test.

While Alpine and McLaren opted not to bring any of the red-banded tyres to the test, the Dutchman opted not to use the sets his team had brought, preferring to stick to the mediums and hards.

And while the timesheets show the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez out in front, both had the benefit of the Pirelli softs, as did George Russell who finished third overall.

The Red Bull rarely stretched its legs, yet most pundits continue to reflect on who might be closest to the world champions, and veteran Fernando Alonso claims the title is already in the bag for the Dutchman.

Playing down the fact that he finished 0.834s off Leclerc's pace, Verstappen told reporters: "Today we made the plan to not focus on pure lap time. I think it was more important just to get the long running done and then get a bit more of an understanding of the car, so we focused on that programme and to be honest I think it all looked quite positive.

"I'm quite happy with the car, how it was behaving," he added, "and then when we head into the race weekend it's about fine-tuning the balance around the circumstances that you face throughout that weekend."

Asked about the general consensus within the paddock that the RB20 is the car to beat, the Dutchman replied: "I don't really think about that. I just look at what we are doing here.

"I think there's, of course, always a lot of work to do," he continued, "you always want to do better. But I think we had a very positive test and we learned a lot from every single thing that we changed on the car, and we also know what we want to do for next week, and that's what we'll focus on."

At the launch Red Bull caught everyone on the hop by not simply evolving the RB19 but instead heading off in a different direction, which includes an obvious influence from Mercedes' predecessors.

Though nobody questions the genius of Adrian Newey, there is an understandable feeling of 'if it aint broke, why fix it', leading some to question why Red Bull appears to have taken the risk.

"I trust the team to be honest," said the three-time world champion, "that they make the right decisions in terms of choosing the direction of the car.

"I saw of course how it was already a bit drawn at the end of last year," he continued. "But honestly, I don't care how the car looks like as long as it's fast.

"When I saw it for the first time, fully built together, I was like, yeah, I mean, whatever shape it has, right. I mean, I go and sit in the car and once you drive out, you feel quite quickly, you know, if it feels quite normal or not.

"Unfortunately, our filming day was wet, so you don't really know anything. But as soon as I jumped in here, it felt pretty normal," he smiled. "Yeah, it looks a bit different, but it's the direction that the team chose. And I believe that that's the best direction to go into if they say so.

"From my side now, it's all about just giving my feedback about the balance of the car, what I think can be improved. But that's an ongoing process.

"I'm not an engineer," he added. "I'm here to do my job in the car and they are here to do their job building the car and preparing it. I think so far everything that we hoped for worked very well, and that's always a little bit of a question mark when you get to the real track, but I have to say in the last few years already I think that has been a good strength of ours."

Check out our Testing galleries from Bahrain, here.