This clearly can happen. If we throw away all the usual abstraction constructs, and model a program as a way to instruct the machine to perform certain actions

This clearly can happen. If we throw away all the usual abstraction constructs, and model a program as a way to instruct the machine to perform certain actions. Then there is a huge spectrum of available tools to realize this program. As often the case, such problem is computationally intractable. Then all sorts of different approaches: static vs. dynamic typing, compiled vs. interpreted, different flavors of languages features, etc. can all affect the end results. Then it's entirely possible that a static language like C is not close enough to the optimal result, such that a different approach can be faster. It happens to be an interpreted language in this case.