Windows 10 1809 Slow to Sleep and Slow to Wakeup

I've posted this question on the ThinkPad forums with no useful answers.

I have a new ThinkPad P52 Xeon E-2176M, 32 GB memory, NVMe SSD Samsung 970 EVO. Pretty much the fastest laptop you can currently get. The setup was redone from scratch (not the Lenovo image) with the x64 1809 master image. Hibernation is disabled. Turn on Fast startup is disabled.

The problem is that when I close the lid, it takes on average 5 seconds from the time the lid is closed to the time the system is alseep (when the ThinkPad red led starts flashing). AND the reverse is also true. It takes 6-8 seconds from the time I open the lid to the time it prompts me for my password.

My 8 year old MacBook Pro goes to sleep and wakes in less than 1 second.

Does anyone know why and is there anything I can do to speed up these actions ?

I've been doing this a long time. When I install a new master image of Windows 10, I install the image, disconnected from the network. Install ALL the OEM drivers (in my case, all the Lenovo verified drivers for that system), then finally connect to the Internet and let Windows 10 update its other components.

And no, I don't have the original Lenovo image. When I do a clean install, I remove ALL partitions on the SSD and let Windows repartition the disk.

I'd like someone who has a decent laptop like a ThinkPad or Dell XPS and comment on what speeds they find when going to sleep or waking.

On a Lenovo T420S AND Windows 10, I must not use the BIOS defaults for USB Always On settings. Anything but the defaults works. Now this dual boot computer has no problem with any BIOS settings when running Ubuntu; only Windows 10 has the problem. I have other Lenovo T series laptops running Windows 7 and I have never seen any problem there.