STANDARD times – an explanation of which could take a whole Time Will Tell column in itself – mean that comparisons may be legitimately made between races run at different distances, on different goings, and at different courses. But there is still nothing quite like comparing the times and sectionals of two races over the same course and distance in quick succession, knowing that minor variations in surface speed will not be a factor.

This proved its worth when comparing the wins of Muffri’ha and Beat The Bank at a mile at Newmarket last Friday. On the face of it, the latter put up a top-notch effort in beating Sir John Lavery by five lengths in the Group 2 Joel Stakes, and there is no doubt that the Andrew Balding-trained gelding is coming on in leaps and bounds.

But he ran the race in a time only 0.47s quicker than had Muffri’ha in winning an ordinary listed contest for fillies and mares earlier on the card, and that is nowhere near as much as might be expected. The resulting timefigures are 113 for Beat The Bank – decent, but some way off Group 1-winning level – and 103 for Muffri’ha.

Closer inspection of the sectionals show that everything bar the winner was stopping late on in Beat The Bank’s race, with the final two furlongs going by in 25.6s (96.3% finishing speed) and the final furlong in a pedestrian 13.45s (91.7% fs).

It is to Beat The Bank’s credit that he kept going as well as he did, but the wide margins almost certainly flattered him to some degree, and the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes on Champions Day at Ascot, for which he is second-favourite in some books, promises to be a much stiffer task. Beat The Bank’s winning timefigure was the third fastest by an older horse in Ireland and Britain in the period under review. The top two honours went instead to the enigmatic Frontiersman (115 in the Listed Godolphin Stakes at Newmarket on Friday), followed by Face The Facts (114 in the Listed Rose Bowl Stakes there on Thursday).

Meanwhile, in Ireland, neither War Decree (Diamond Stakes at Dundalk) nor Psychedelic Funk (Concorde Stakes at Tipperary) ran especially fast in victory in rather tactical races.

The former earned a timefigure of just 89, but did finish quite quickly, while the latter (no timefigure possible) ran an average race speed slower than the preceding handicap at nearly two furlongs further. That assumes the distances were as advertised, however.