驾驶风格能解释拉塞尔和皮亚斯特里2026年的困境吗？
Mark Hughes撰文分析，拉塞尔认为自己的驾驶风格与2026年赛车和轮胎不匹配，但文章指出维斯塔潘和勒克莱尔的风格各不相同，拉塞尔将两人归为同类并不成立。
在马德里Q3最后一轮飞驰的前两个计时段，乔治·拉塞尔与梅赛德斯队友基米·安东内利的差距在0.1秒以内。到整圈结束时，他又多损失了两成。前两个计时段平均每段损失半成，但最后一个计时段损失是这个数字的四倍。
他的后轮对于第三计时段连续反复的90度弯来说实在太热了，而这显然取决于他此前如何使用轮胎。
这定义了他的这个周末——他最终获得第五名，落后夺冠的安东内利半分钟，尽管两人策略不同。
这多少象征了拉塞尔的2026赛季，可能是他八年F1生涯中最弱的一个赛季，而偏偏就在他终于得到一辆具备争冠实力的赛车之时。
赛后他思考了自己今年挣扎的根源，并坚定地将其归为自身自然驾驶风格与2026年一代赛车和轮胎要求之间的不匹配。
“当你看看去年[奥斯卡]皮亚斯特里对兰多[诺里斯]的竞争力、查尔斯[勒克莱尔]对刘易斯[汉密尔顿]，甚至上一个时代马克斯[维斯塔潘]对所有队友的统治力，这是一个奇怪的赛季，”拉塞尔说。
“今年我自己、查尔斯、奥斯卡相比我们的队友都挣扎得多。而马克斯，他的队友们与他的差距比过去六年任何人都要小得多，我认为我们都有非常相似的驾驶风格。
“今年表现非常好的车手——基米、刘易斯、兰多——都有相当相似的驾驶风格。所以对我来说很清楚，用这辆车、这些轮胎，趋势就在那里。”
这些赛车/轮胎与拉塞尔和皮亚斯特里的挣扎之间几乎肯定存在因果关系。他们各自倾向于追求几何上的理想路线：晚入弯，方向盘初始转动相当突兀，更多依赖转向而非重量转移来实现入弯旋转，并且刹车与转向的重叠非常少。
在高抓地力赛道、下压力很大的赛车上，这种风格可以表现得非常出色。但当抓地力下降时就不那么有效了。
在The 比赛会员俱乐部中，通过Mark Hughes和Edd Straw的“驾驶风格秘密”系列获取更深入的F1驾驶风格分析。
2026年赛车下压力和轮胎抓地力的降低，提高了这种技术开始出现问题的赛道抓地力交叉点——也就是说，用这些赛车，比以前有更多赛道与这种技术并不真正契合。
此外，在这些赛车上，能量管理的要求进一步放大了这种代价。入弯时你保持的动量越少，电池补充的就越多，这意味着直道上的部署持续时间不会那么长。拉塞尔和皮亚斯特里都在某些地方为此挣扎过。
但拉塞尔所做的类比在比较维斯塔潘和勒克莱尔时就站不住脚了，他们各自有与彼此、也与拉塞尔和皮亚斯特里无关的风格。
维斯塔潘也许拥有围场内最全面的技能范围，但他偏好一辆前端极其极端的赛车，这让他能用相对较少的转向获得弯中旋转。他对旋转和偏航有着惊人的敏感度，这让他能调整转向/刹车/油门来抑制通常伴随“车头灵敏”赛车而来的潜在出弯转向过度。
任何一辆——比如当前的红牛小红牛22——在低速和中速入弯时转向不足的赛车，都会限制这种技能相对他人能为他买到多少圈速。其他赛车的性能特征表明，在这些规则下完全有可能拥有一辆车头灵敏的赛车。只是红牛一直没能提供这样一辆。
勒克莱尔传统上通过刹车/油门/转向之间充满活力的平衡动作来获得旋转，且重叠很多。这让他在短弯中绝对如鱼得水，因为快速旋转的回报不会被弯中后段的代价所压倒。
他可能是摩纳哥、巴库和红牛环最快的车手。但长弯赛道——上海、匈牙利——会给他带来困难，因为他诱使赛车比最初想要转得更多的做法，会在弯中后段付出代价。2026年规则对能量管理的要求意味着其中一些技巧几乎变得多余。但他仍然是一位快得惊人的车手。
安东内利、诺里斯和汉密尔顿的风格也相当独特——而且适应性强。
事实上，汉密尔顿在地面效应时代挣扎之后，对新一代赛车要求的适应，是本赛季最值得注意的车手表现故事之一。
概括地说，他在入弯时让赛车比勒克莱尔更平、更稳，这意味着在不同弯型中两人各有占优之处。他在需要时仍能超晚刹车，但他将其与一种不会让前轴过度负荷的柔韧性结合起来——而法拉利的下压力平衡让这对他非常奏效。
安东内利和诺里斯显然与各自的工程团队非常努力地理解这些赛车的特性，因为他们在驾驶中引入了专门针对能量管理的特征。例如，安东内利的油门使用极具特色，似乎是为了在刹车下最大化回收而不是在部分油门上浪费。
他的输入非常平滑，因为他以如此精确和自信判断入弯抓地力，以至于弯中几乎不需要修正输入——这可能是他与拉塞尔之间最明显的对比。
这表明他对前轴抓地力有更好的感觉，但当抓地力高时，他也完全乐于采用拉塞尔式的晚入弯/大转向方式。他只是似乎更清楚什么时候那不是最优策略。
诺里斯一直有一种漂亮的方式，渐进地给车头加载，并能根据可用抓地力走任何需要的线路。
和维斯塔潘一样，如果赛车转向不足，这种风格往往会崩溃，但通过这种渐进加载，有时从更远处浅切入弯（在匈牙利站FP1抓地力极低时最后一弯的效果极佳），意味着他在出弯时受到的突然甩尾影响要小得多，因为当前轮最终抓住时他的转向锁角没有那么大。
诺里斯本人并不认为自己的风格是独特的区分因素。
“我不会说我的驾驶风格适合这辆车，”他说。“我认为我的驾驶风格好是因为我能更好地适应。我不认为只有一种风格有效，我开得和基米不一样……我的适应能力让我能驾驭我拥有的赛车。我的长处是我对不同驾驶风格的适应能力。
“去年年初[这辆车]更适合奥斯卡一点。我的长处是能更好地适应，最终理解如何以更好的方式驾驶它。因此我下半赛季表现更好。
“今年？你开这辆车和去年完全不一样，我觉得连1%都谈不上相同。所以关键在于适应。”
归根结底，拉塞尔（和皮亚斯特里）必须适应。因为赛车不会来迁就他们。
英文原文
After two sectors in the final Q3 runs of Madring George Russell was within 0.1 seconds of Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli. By the end of the lap, he’d dropped a further two tenths. An average of half-a-tenth loss in the first two sectors but four times that in the last one.
His rear tyres were simply too hot for the repeated 90-degree turns of sector three and that, obviously, was a function of how he had used them up to that point.
It defined his weekend as one in which he finished fifth, half-a-minute adrift of the race-winning Antonelli, albeit on a different strategy.
It was somehow emblematic of Russell's 2026 season, probably the weakest of his eight-year F1 career at just the time he finally gets a title-calibre car.
Afterwards he was pondering where his struggles this year lay and he puts it firmly in the category of a mismatch between his natural driving style and the demands of the 2026 generation of car and tyre.
"It's been a strange season when you look at the competitiveness of [Oscar] Piastri against Lando [Norris] last year, Charles [Leclerc] versus Lewis [Hamilton] and even the dominance of Max [Verstappen] against all of his team-mates in the previous era," Russell said.
"This year myself, Charles, Oscar are struggling much more compared to our team-mates. And Max, his team-mates have been substantially closer to him than anybody has in the last six years, and I think we've all got pretty similar driving styles.
"The drivers performing very well this year - Kimi, Lewis, Lando - have got quite similar driving styles. So to me it's pretty clear with this car, with these tyres, the trends are there."
There is almost certainly a causal relationship between these cars/tyres and the struggles of Russell and Piastri. They each tend to drive to a geometric ideal, late turn-in with a positively abrupt initial turn of the wheel, relying more on that steering than weight manipulation for rotation into the turn and using very little overlap between braking and cornering.
It can work brilliantly well on a high-grip track in a car with a lot of downforce. But not as well as the grip reduces.
Get more in-depth F1 driving style analysis from Mark Hughes and Edd Straw in their Driving Style Secrets series in The Race Members' Club
The reduced downforce and tyre grip of the 2026 cars has raised the crossover point of circuit grip at which that technique begins to be problematic - ie with these cars there are more circuits than before which don't really sync very well with that technique.
Furthermore, the penalty of that is compounded in these cars by the demands of energy management. The less momentum you can maintain on entry, the more in-fills the battery makes, meaning the deployment doesn't last as long on the straights. Russell and Piastri have both struggled in places with this.
But the equivalence Russell makes breaks down when comparing Verstappen and Leclerc, who each have their own styles unrelated to each other's or those of Russell and Piastri.
Verstappen has perhaps the most versatile range of skills of anyone on the grid, but his preference is a car with an extreme front end which allows him to derive corner rotation from relatively little steering. He has the amazing sensitivity to rotation and yaw, which allows him to adjust steering/brakes/throttle to dampen out the latent exit oversteer which would normally come with an 'on-the-nose' car.
Any car - such as the current Red Bull RB22 - which understeers at low- and medium-speed entries will limit how much laptime that skill buys him over others. The performance profile of other cars suggests that it's perfectly feasible to have an on-the-nose car under these regulations. It's just that Red Bull has not been able to provide one.
Leclerc has traditionally got his rotation from an energetic balancing act between brakes/throttle/steering, with lots of overlap. It makes him absolutely dynamite around short corners where the reward for the quick rotation isn't overwhelmed by the penalty later in the corner.
He's probably the fastest driver there is around Monaco, Baku and the Red Bull Ring. But long-corner tracks - Shanghai, Hungaroring - can present difficulties for him, as a price is extracted later in the corner for the way he tricked the car into turning more than it wanted initially. The 2026 regulation's demand for energy management mean that some of those tricks have become almost redundant. But he remains a fantastically fast driver.
Antonelli, Norris and Hamilton are also quite distinctive in their styles - and adaptable.
In fact, Hamilton's adaptation to the demands of this generation of car after his struggles with the ground-effect era has been one of the most noteworthy driver performance stories of the season.
As a generalisation, he keeps the car flatter and calmer than Leclerc on entry and this means there is a variance in corner type at which one betters the other. He's still able to be super-late on the brakes when required, but he's combining it with a suppleness that is not overworking the front axle - and the Ferrari's downforce balance is allowing that to work very well for him.
Antonelli and Norris have clearly worked very hard with their engineering teams to understand the quirks of these cars as they've introduced features in their driving specifically tuned to the energy management. Antonelli's throttle usage is highly distinctive, for example, and seems to be tailored around maximising harvest under braking rather than wasting it on part-throttle.
His inputs are beautifully smooth as he judges the grip upon entry with such precision and confidence that there is very little corrective input required through the corner - this is probably the most visible contrast between him and Russell.
It suggests he's just got a better feel for the front-axle grip, but when the grip is high he's perfectly comfortable taking the Russell late entry/big steering approach. He just seems to have a better awareness of when that's not the optimum tactic.
Norris has always had a beautiful way of progressively loading the front of the car up and can take whatever line is needed according to the available grip.
As with Verstappen, it's a style which tends to fall apart if the car is an understeerer, but using that progression, sometimes turning in shallow from further back (seen to great effect in the final turn at the Hungaroring in FP1 when the grip was super-low), means he suffers far less from snaps on the exit, because he doesn't have as much lock on when the fronts finally grip.
Norris himself doesn't see his style as the distinctive differentiator.
"I wouldn't really say my driving style suits this car," he says. "I think my driving style is good because I'm able to adapt better. I don't think it's one style that works and I don't drive the same way as Kimi…my adaptability is what allows me to drive the car I've got. My strength is my adaptability to different driving styles.
"Last year at the beginning [the car] suited Oscar a little bit more. My strength was being able to adapt better to then finally understand how to drive it in a better way. Hence I had a better second half of the season.
"This year? You don't drive this car anywhere close to last year, not even 1% I feel is remotely the same. So it’s about adaptation."
The bottom line is Russell (and Piastri) have to adapt. Because the cars aren't coming to them.
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