Gradle Build faster then Check?

Hi all,

We have a large build ~350 -> 400 KLOC.
We are running builds with --parallel up to --max-workers=12

We have 2 main modules that need to be built sequentially.

With gradle build the tests of both modules run in parallel.
With gradle check the tests of both modules run sequentially (tests forked in each module).

This is the difference between 1:20 build times and ~50 second build times.

What could be causing build to parallelize those tests, when check does not. I presume it is something in our configuration, but I thought given build depends on check that build would always be slower.