维斯塔潘认为替补车手出色表现暴露F1问题
在荷兰大奖赛上，替补车手利亚姆·劳森和角田裕毅表现亮眼，四届世界冠军维斯塔潘暗示这表明2026年的F1变得过于简单。
利亚姆·劳森和角田裕毅在荷兰大奖赛上相当不错的替补表现，是否证明了2026年的F1变得太容易了？
四届世界冠军马克斯·维斯塔潘在排位赛后的暗示似乎正是如此——他那担任替补的红牛队友劳森只比他慢了0.115秒。
角田裕毅在小红牛接替了劳森，在本周末之前仅用一天模拟器工作熟悉过VCARB-03，从未实际驾驶过2026年的赛车，而他在第二节排位赛中只比小红牛的正赛车手阿维德·林德布拉德慢0.102秒。
维斯塔潘认为，这证明了这些赛车在排位赛中达到极限要容易得多，因为其独特的能量管理需求削弱了那种大胆激进、寸土必争的单圈冲刺的重要性——这让维斯塔潘以及排位赛专家夏尔·勒克莱尔这样的车手感到沮丧。
“尤其是在排位赛中，我认为现在的这些赛车要找到极限要容易得多，因为在不少地方你的电量会有所不足，一切都变得更容易把控，”当被问到劳森和角田之间的差距是否证明车手们今年能起的作用变小时，维斯塔潘这样说道。
“我认为与之前的赛车相比，这个周末很好地展示了这一点。对我来说，这并不意外。”
“整个赛季你已经能看到，所有人都始终在十分之一秒、十分之二秒的差距之内。”
“如果你的排位赛非常糟糕，那就是十分之三秒。差距总是很小的。”
劳森与维斯塔潘在单圈上的差距：荷兰大奖赛
劳森对2026款红牛福特动力单元非常熟悉，因为这款动力单元全年都在为他的小红牛提供动力，但在赞德沃特之前他从未驾驶过红牛小红牛22。
取他在赞德沃特两节排位赛中与维斯塔潘差距的平均值，得到0.245秒，这与伊萨克·哈贾尔2026赛季至今与维斯塔潘的平均差距（0.232秒）非常接近，尽管后者的样本量要大得多。
哈贾尔这个差距明显低于自2018年里卡多成为维斯塔潘队友以来，任何红牛队友与维斯塔潘排位赛平均差距的水平。
但当然，这不一定全都要归功于新规则。哈贾尔今年干得非常出色，以至于红牛多年来第一次甚至都不去考虑它的二号车手。
而劳森在小红牛度过了一个精彩的赛季，所以他在一队的表现比2025年初要好，这也是说得通的。
不过维斯塔潘提出了一个有趣的假设。《The 比赛》网站（The 比赛），也就是埃德·斯特罗（Edd Straw）的每周车手排名，确实因此变得更难做了，因为今年更难把车手和赛车的表现区分开，从而对队友之间做出明确的判断。
像奥斯卡·皮亚斯特里这样的车手也抱怨说，“电脑的表现或失常”经常在决定排位赛的结果，所以车手手中掌握的主动权变少了。
从更宏观的角度看2026年与2025年队友之间的差距，10支车队中（不算新加入的凯迪拉克）有6支车队的队友间差距比去年缩小了。阿隆索和斯特罗尔之间平均0.303秒的差距是今年队内最大的差距，而2025年最大的差距是红牛车队维斯塔潘与角田裕毅之间的0.735秒。
不过也可能是因为维斯塔潘现在更难像以前那样碾压他的队友了，因为2025年第二大的差距只有0.453秒（拉塞尔对安东内利）。
尽管这些数据同样存在一些限定条件，比如汉密尔顿和安东内利相比艰难的2025年竞争力有所提升，而这未必与排位赛中更容易达到F1赛车的极限有关。再加上目前只跑完了半个赛季，所以这些差距还有很多时间可以缩小或拉大。
但根据迈凯伦车队领队安德烈亚·斯特拉的说法，以上这一切并不一定证明2026年的F1对车手来说更容易了。
“这两辆车被我们的两位车手——我不知道其他车队的情况——都归为难以驾驶的赛车，”当The 比赛向他提出这个话题时，斯特拉（Stella）如此说道。
“去年，两位车手之间的表现差距明显要小得多。而现在，一旦车手处于劣势状态，这个差距就可能非常巨大。
“这些车难以驾驶有多方面原因。赛季初，问题出在弯道上，后来又出现在直道上。弯道难是因为抓地力低、下压力少得多、轮胎更小；直道难是因为能量输出的不一致性，或者可能在刹车前突然出现一次动力骤降（superclip），导致你失去了刹车参考点，又或者有时令人沮丧的是，你在高速状态下过早地全油门，结果之后反而损失了能量输出的效果。
“所以说，驾驶今年的赛车在多个方面都更加困难。至于与动力单元相关的问题，我认为车手和工程师们现在已经更加熟悉了，已经逐渐适应了，也能够更好地应对这些问题。”
“不过，在这次排位赛的总结会上，车手们仍然提到动力单元表现中的一些因素，会影响他们极限推进时的稳定性。所以这个问题并没有完全消失，但比赛季开始时已经好多了。
“但与弯道和抓地力相关的原因依然存在。即使所有车队都增加了下压力，车手也很难预测刹车时会出现什么问题，或者赛车在出弯牵引时会不会突然失控。
“对于上一代赛车来说，空气动力学负荷要大得多，轮胎的抓地力也强得多，所以相对更容易驾驭。虽然当时对车手来说也很难，因为一切都发生得快得多，但比较容易的原因是通常你只需要应对一种状况。
“而在这里，从抓地力稳定性的角度来看，任何时候都可能发生很多事情，甚至还有对风的敏感性——在匈牙利，或是在这里，风都是重要因素之一，导致这里没有一位车手能在排位赛中跑出一圈干净的飞驰圈。”
当被问及维斯塔潘关于2026年一级方程式赛车对车手技术要求降低的评论时，斯特拉回答道：“我不太确定，真的不确定，如果我去评论另一支车队，那我的说法会不准确。
“如果我要基于我之前的说法，谈谈我在迈凯伦所了解的情况，我会说今年甚至更加困难。
“就像过去一样，比如2025年，你需要适应速度，适应一切发生得有多快。但今年你必须适应一个事实，就是你可能遇到任何类型的问题，因为赛车会打滑得很厉害。
“所以，这可能取决于赛车的特性，甚至取决于车手的特性。但如果我结合迈凯伦的经验来看，我认为今年更加困难。”
英文原文
Are the very respectable stand-in performances of Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda at the Dutch Grand Prix evidence that Formula 1 has become too easy in 2026?
That’s certainly what four-time world champion Max Verstappen was hinting at after qualifying, where his stand-in Red Bull team-mate Lawson was just 0.115s slower than him.
Yuki Tsunoda, who replaced Lawson at Racing Bulls and hadn’t driven the 2026 cars with just a single day of simulator work aboard the VCARB-03 prior to this weekend, was just 0.102s off regular Racing Bulls driver Arvid Lindblad in Q2.
Verstappen thinks this is evidence of how much easier it is to get to the limit of these cars in qualifying, given their unique energy demands have taken the emphasis away from swashbuckling, elbows-out one-lap efforts - much to the frustration of drivers like Verstappen and qualifying specialist Charles Leclerc.
“Especially in qualifying, I think it's a lot easier nowadays with these cars to find the limit, because you're also in quite a few places where you're a bit down on battery and everything becomes a bit easier to land,” Verstappen said when asked if Lawson and Tsunoda’s gaps were evidence drivers can make less of a difference this year.
“I think that demonstrated quite well this weekend compared to the previous cars. For me, that's not a surprise.
“You see it already the whole season; everyone is always within one tenth, two tenths.
“If you have a very bad qualifying, three tenths. It's always the margins are small.”
Lawson’s one-lap gap to Verstappen: Dutch GP
Lawson is very familiar with the 2026 Red Bull Ford power unit, as it’s powered his Racing Bulls all year, but he’d never driven the Red Bull RB22 prior to Zandvoort.
Take an average of the gap to Verstappen from his two Zandvoort qualifying sessions and you get 0.245s, very close to Isack Hadjar’s average gap to Verstappen in 2026 so far (0.232s), albeit over a much bigger sample size.
That Hadjar gap is considerably lower than any average Red Bull team-mate qualifying gap to Verstappen since Daniel Ricciardo was his team-mate in 2018.
But of course that’s not necessarily all down to the new rules. Hadjar has done a sterling job this year, so much so that Red Bull isn’t even considering its number two driver for the first time in years.
And Lawson’s put in a stellar season with Racing Bulls, so his performing better in the senior team than he did at the start of 2025 also makes sense.
But Verstappen raises an interesting hypothesis. The Race, namely Edd Straw’s weekly driver rankings, have certainly been complicated by it being harder to separate the performance of the driver and car this year and make definitive intra-team judgements.
Drivers like Oscar Piastri have also complained that “computers behaving or misbehaving” are also often deciding qualifying sessions, so there’s less power in the driver’s hands.
Looking more generally at the gaps between team-mates in 2026 versus 2025, the gap between team-mates in six of the 10 teams (discounting newcomer Cadillac) has gotten smaller since last year. The average 0.303s gap between Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll is the largest intra-team gap this year, compared to the largest of 2025, the 0.735s between Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda at Red Bull.
Perhaps it is the case though that it’s harder for Verstappen to destroy his team-mates like before, given the next biggest 2025 gap was 0.453s (George Russell-Kimi Antonelli).
Although that data again has caveats, like Lewis Hamilton and Antonelli’s increased competitiveness versus difficult 2025s, that aren’t necessarily to do with it being easier to get to the limit of F1 cars in qualifying. Plus the fact only half a season’s complete so there's plenty of time for those gaps to close or widen.
But all of that is not necessarily evidence that things are easier for drivers in F1 2026, according to McLaren team boss Andrea Stella.
“These cars are classified by both our drivers - I don't know about the others - as difficult cars to drive,” Stella said when The Race put the topic to him.
“Definitely last year we could see much less scatter between the two drivers. Here, when a driver is a bit on the back foot, then this can be a large amount.
“They are difficult cars to drive for several reasons. At the start of the season, it was in the corners and then in the straights. In the corners because of the low grip, much less downforce, smaller tyres, and in the straights because of the inconsistencies of the deployment, or the fact that you may have a sudden superclip before braking and now you've lost your braking reference, or sometimes the frustrating element that you go on power early in high speed and now you're losing deployment later.
“So there were several angles from which driving this year's car was more difficult. Those related to the power unit, I would say that the drivers and the engineers are now more familiar with, have become more familiar with, and they are sort of more ready to cope with that.
“Still, in the debriefing of this qualifying, drivers refer to elements of the power unit behaviour which affect the consistency of pushing at the limit. So this is not completely gone, but it's much less than the start of the season.
“But the reason associated [with] the corners and the grip is still there. Even if all teams have added downforce, it's very difficult for the drivers to predict what the problem is going to be in braking, or whether the car will snap or not in traction.
“With the previous generation of cars, there was much, much more load aerodynamically and much more grip from the tyres, and it was easier. While it was difficult for the drivers because everything was happening much faster, it was easier because normally you had kind of one thing to cope [with].
“Here, there's a lot that can happen at any moment from a grip consistency point of view, or even sensitivity to the wind, which in Hungary, or here, played a major part in the fact that nobody here had a clean lap in qualifying.”
Asked about Verstappen’s comments that F1 2026 put less onus on drivers’ skill, Stella replied: “I'm not so sure, like I'm genuinely not sure, and I would be inaccurate if I commented for another team.
“If I comment for what I've understood at McLaren, based on what I said before, I would say that this year is even more difficult.
“Like in the past, like in 2025, you needed to get used to the speed, and how fast things were happening. But this year you have to get used to adapt to the fact that you can have any kind of problem, because the car slides a lot.
“So it's, maybe this may depend on car characteristics, or even the driver's characteristics. But if I consider the McLaren experience, I think it's more difficult this year.”
The Race ·
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