Not that he would bring it up publicly but Jake Hughes' outrageous misfortune at key moments of his 2024-25 Formula E season, likely his one and only with the troubled Maserati MSG team, was next level unlucky.
Usually in the sob-story world of Formula E, such a tale would involve a combination of self, team and random errors. But in Hughes' case it was heavily biased toward the indiscriminately unfortunate, and to an extreme degree.
Consider these adversities: Tokyo: a pit boost disaster via finger trouble by the team. This occurs again in similar circumstances at Shanghai in race one while he was destined for at least a sixth place finish and with an attack mode overlap in the bag.
Next time out in Jakarta, Hughes is again looking at a points finish when a failure means his car loses all brakes and he retires immediately.
In Berlin he is nerfed out of the points by an over-eager Antonio Felix Da Costa and a day later another brake failure results in a trip to the barriers in qualifying. At the time he was second and heading into the duels.
On home turf in London the luck got even more wretched. He's taken out by team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne on the first lap after the Belgian got a snap of oversteer, corrected it and clouted the other Maserati – a toe link was broken.
The final race of the season is marred by a battery failure which lost him the whole of the morning's free practice session. His race is then effectively ended by a puncture whilst running ninth, although this would likely have been much improved upon as he had the most energy in the field and still had both attack modes to execute. A probable attack on Sebastien Buemi's third place was denied.
These misadventures don't even include getting turfed off in a first lap incident in Sao Paulo or a red flag inducing shunt triggered by an over-enthusiastic Buemi at Homestead.
Conservative estimates on that lot probably total 38-45 points meaning that if even some of those misfortunes had not occurred he would have out-scored team-mate Vandoorne (who actually outscored Hughes 62-40).
Strip all that away and Hughes still scored decently with three top five finishes in Jeddah (third and fifth) and Shanghai (fourth). In the context of being within a team that was clearly in poor shape from investment point of view - indeed it was all but bankrupt save for clear financial assistance from Formula E - then both Hughes and Vandoorne actually had a pretty decent season.
"I reckon it's been a season where I've actually driven better than I have done in my three seasons here," Hughes told The Race in London last month.
"I've fared well against Stoffel, who is a world champion here, but the problems have been a bit ridiculous to be honest."
That's the closest you'll get to Hughes playing any kind of blame game. He's not built that way and that is why he was such a popular presence at Venturi and Mercedes EQ as a test and development driver, and also at previous race team McLaren and Maserati.
His actual speed has never been in doubt. He stacked up well against Rene Rast and Sam Bird in his McLaren seasons, bettering the former and equalling the latter on total points. He outqualified each of them across those seasons and also claimed four pole positions.
But the random rottenness of 2025 is putting in danger his chances to go for a fourth season. Hughes' chances appear to centre upon a Cupra Kiro or Envision slot, depending on vacancies at each.
Hughes is coy about his prospects but it's hard to see a more capable driver around that could fill a gap.
The Cupra Kiro seat alongside Dan Ticktum, which was generally wasted with David Beckmann in it this season, looks to be most natural place. Hughes gets on well with his countryman Ticktum and the team would also benefit from his technical proficiency as it develops its package.
Hughes is a team-mate you'd have to be a real fool to irreversibly fall out with. From Rast to Bird to Vandoorne, there's just one consistent thing among their different personalities: they all got on just fine with Jake Hughes, one of racing's more down to earth specimens.
Hughes has that experience of working with manufacturers too, from Mercedes between 2021-22, helping develop the Nissan with McLaren from 2022-24, and then working with Stellantis this season. Few have had the variety of technical experience Hughes has.
When he took pole in his second ever FE race at Diriyah in 2023 and followed that up with another in Monaco a few months later, Hughes was hot property. That he took those poles on two of Formula E's toughest driver tracks is telling too.
But there are only so many seats in Formula E, with probably only Andretti and Jaguar ones open in addition to the two mentioned above.
There will be an unjust omission or two from the entry list that will be issued later this year. It would be a bit of a sporting affront if one of them was Hughes.
The under the radar F1 test
A valued simulator driver for the McLaren F1 team, Hughes was afforded a surprise track test in a 2023 spec McLaren MCL60 in June at Barcelona.
The reason for the run was mainly to assist Hughes in a real life reference and further improve the MTC sim facility. His time at the wheel at Barcelona didn't go unnoticed by McLaren engineers.
The Race understands that Hughes completed around 25 push laps over the course of the TPC test day and got to within 0.3s of Valtteri Bottas' time that the 10 time grand prix winner achieved in the same car and similar conditions the day before.
By all accounts that's a very decent test for a driver who was having his first ever experience of an F1 car in real time.
But it was the clarity and quality of Hughes' feedback that has impressed engineers and technical leaders in the past, something that is viewed as a major asset in the ultra-close, forensic advantage world of Formula E too.
