{"id":323282,"date":"2025-08-06T19:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T19:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323282\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T19:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T19:25:10","slug":"mark-hughes-when-firsts-the-worst-why-f1-drivers-lose-to-slower-team-mates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323282\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Hughes: When first’s the worst. Why F1 drivers lose to slower team-mates"},"content":{"rendered":"

As McLaren<\/a> endeavours to allow each of its drivers an equal and fair shot at the sport\u2019s biggest prize, so it\u2019s coming up against the phenomenon of random events punishing the strategy of the guy who has the fight won. Some days the bear will eat you, some days you\u2019ll eat the bear. It\u2019s not really in your control which way around, just external circumstances.<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri<\/a> can feel hard done-by over the last three races, in each of which he has been leading team-mate Lando Norris<\/a> in the race\u2019s early stages and looking very much in control, only to then have external circumstances offer Norris a lifeline. On two of those three occasions (Silverstone<\/a> and Hungary<\/a>) Norris was able to grab that line and use it to defeat his rival. But the greater merit was with the other guy. They were days when the bear ate Piastri. On the other occasion \u2013 at Spa<\/a> \u2013 Piastri was able to slacken Norris\u2019s lifeline and stay ahead.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a skill in pouncing upon the opportunities provided, though. Those are the days when Norris got to eat the bear. But at Budapest he needed to roll off a great sequence of laps once he was in clear air while keeping his tyres in good enough shape to fend off an attacking Piastri on tyres that were 14 laps newer near the end. It\u2019s a tricky tightrope to walk and you could sense from the radio conversation that his race engineer Will Joseph was a little concerned he might have been pushing a little too hard in that crucial mid-phase of the race once the two-stoppers had pitted out of his way to reveal the lovely clear air. But he\u2019d got it spot on. Good enough to overturn Piastri\u2019s greater intrinsic pace on the day.<\/p>\n

George Russell<\/a> \u2013 a distant third behind the McLarens \u2013 joined Oscar and Lando in the green room and upon seeing on screen how close Piastri had come to taking both McLarens out with a dive-bomb into T1 two laps from the end, jokingly commented to Piastri: \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you T-bone him? That would\u2019ve been great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell would have been very aware of how his friend Norris was feeling about a race which had come to him unexpectedly while trailing his team-mate for outright pace. For it had happened to Russell exactly like this at Spa last year<\/a>. It was one of those occasions (rare in \u201924) when Lewis Hamilton<\/a> had a decisive edge in pace over Russell. It was one of those days, just like Hungary last Sunday, when everyone was certain that two-stopping was the fastest way. But when a \u2018why not let\u2019s try it, there\u2019s nothing to lose\u2019 decision to switch to a one-stop proved a winning call.<\/p>\n

On that day a year ago, as the two-stopping Hamilton, Charles Leclerc<\/a> and Piastri had pitted and left Russell \u2013 with no undercut pressure from behind as he was last of the fast cars \u2013 in an out-of-sequence lead, he got a feeling. \u201cIt was weird,\u201d he reported. \u201cSuddenly the tyres and the car felt so good. I got into this groove. Once I was in the lead, no backmarkers or other cars in front, it kind of felt like you were driving in the simulator. I was watching the gap to Lewis and the rate he was catching me and I just thought, \u2018there\u2019s no reason why we can\u2019t stay out and try to make it work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As McLaren endeavours to allow each of its drivers an equal and fair shot at the sport\u2019s biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[116833,4199,707,4200,1711,1712,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-323282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-2025-hungarian-gp","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-lando-norris","13":"tag-oscar-piastri","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114983464427891642","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}