Like we say here "una golondrina no hace verano" wich translated is "One swallow does not make a summer"
I love the sound of this, it is something similar to a phrase me and my friends say, though it is not a true thing all in our culture say: "habis bukan siap" which translates to "finished isn't finished"... hard to say in English lol
When we look at Perez's performance we can think that Ferrari would be able to challenge Red Bull in next races. However when we think about the level difference between Verstappen and Perez we need to wait for the next race. I hope that Ferrari managed to change something and we can watch the rest of the season more competitively.
Qualification tells you about the drivers and cars on their own and to me that's more than enough to say if rivals can compete properly against each other, the levels like you say.
But people perform to different levels depending on who is chasing, who is leading, and others around them. Someone said earlier Verstappen used to be Crashstappen, now he matured? Or is his car just better?
I at least watched the replay of the race by fast forwarding it and saw all the incidents happened during the race.