Python string 'join' is faster (?) than '+', but what's wrong here?

I asked the most efficient method for mass dynamic string concatenation in an earlier post and I was suggested to use the join method, the best, simplest and fastest method to do so (as everyone said that). But while I was playing with string concatenations, I found some weird(?) results. I'm sure something is going on but I can't not get it quite. Here is what I did:

I defined these functions:

import timeit
def x():
    s=[]
    for i in range(100):
        # Other codes here...
        s.append("abcdefg"[i%7])
    return ''.join(s)

def y():
    s=''
    for i in range(100):
        # Other codes here...
        s+="abcdefg"[i%7]
    return s

def z():
    s=''
    for i in range(100):
        # Other codes here...
        s=s+"abcdefg"[i%7]
    return s

def p():
    s=[]
    for i in range(100):
        # Other codes here...
        s+="abcdefg"[i%7]
    return ''.join(s)

def q():
    s=[]
    for i in range(100):
        # Other codes here...
        s = s + ["abcdefg"[i%7]]
    return ''.join(s)

I have tried to keep other things (except the concatenation) almost same throughout the functions. Then I tested with the following with results in comment (using Python 3.1.1 IDLE on Windows 32 bit machine):

timeit.timeit(x) # 31.54912480500002
timeit.timeit(y) # 23.533029429999942 
timeit.timeit(z) # 22.116181330000018
timeit.timeit(p) # 37.718607439999914
timeit.timeit(q) # 108.60377576499991

That means it shows that strng = strng + dyn_strng is the fastest. Though the difference in times are not that significant (except the last one), but I wanna know why this is happening. Is that because I am using Python 3.1.1 and that provides '+' as most efficient? Should I use '+' as an alternative to join? Or, have I done something extremely silly? Or what? Please explain clearly.