Papazian's Palace Bitter - Primary ferment time?

So a friend who has a little more experience (I am a kit brewer) helped me with this and was fairly adamant that it spend several days, 4, maybe 5, in primary (never heard of this before) and go into secondary for about the same period. We bottled a little over week after the boil.

Frankly I'm unfamiliar with the style and Papazian's recipe does say "Excellent within 2 weeks, sometimes sooner."

Have not tried it yet, but my buddy is sure it will be good from the bottle this weekend, only two weeks since the boil.

All my beers in the past, IPAs, APAs, EPAs have done at least 3-4 weeks in primary, never have done a secondary and usually bottle conditioned for at least 3 weeks before drinking. These times were based on reading posts here, the actual timelines in the instructions were usually 14 day primary, 14 day bottle, or something like that.

So I guess my question is why is this recipe "mature" in such a short period of time? The basic ingredients are still the same and it contains a fair amount of fermentable sugar.

Oh, and I should mention that I always thought my kits turned out really well with the primary fermentation and bottle conditioning times I allowed.