On the basis of three short days of preseason testing in Bahrain, Mercedes' Formula One dominance is under threat.
Seven straight years of title success warn against making such statements at this time of the year, but if you focus purely on what happened on track in Bahrain, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that Red Bull has built a faster car.
"We can see from the data we've collected over the last few days that on race pace, we're not as quick as Red Bull," Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said on Sunday evening.