Daniel Ricciardo thinks Jenson Button's time in FP2 was impressive regardless of whether the McLaren was on low fuel in Bahrain.
Button was the surprise performer in Friday's second practice session, finishing as best of the rest behind the Mercedes drivers and accumulating 32 laps. Both Ferraris failed to set representative times on the super-soft times but it was still a lofty finish for a team which is still only targeting Q3 appearances.
Ricciardo was surprised to see Button's time and thinks it should be taken seriously, even if fuel is one of the many unknown variables in practice.
"Jenson was surprising pace ... not him the team had surprising pace," Ricciardo said. "He is alright for an old man!"
Asked if he thought Toro Rosso and McLaren could be ahead come Sunday, he replied: "You don't know. It is still early in the season. Even if Jenson was on 5 kilos of fuel it was still a pretty decent lap time, so we will see tomorrow. On the long runs we should have them covered. That is only going by what we learned in Melbourne. Here it is still a little bit hazy."
Ricciardo thinks Red Bull's race pace will be stronger than wherever it qualifies on Saturday evening.
"Short runs will be similar to Melbourne -- we are on the cusp of Q3. But the race we will be a little bit better on the tires. For me I stand here not really knowing how my deg was. It was really interrupted by the VSC, but I think Danny looked a bit more representative. Wherever we qualify I believe that we will have better race pace than that position.
"The first session went okay and then P2 I didn't get many good runs. The very first lap of the run I locked the front into Turn 1 on the soft tire and then we couldn't use that again for the long runs. We missed quite a lot of high fuel running, and then the high fuel running we did get with the option was interrupted with all those virtual safety cars, so missed out on a bit of information."