Why does a server with a high ping receive a response to a request faster?

Question

Node.js

There are 3 cloudflare servers connected from 1 site. There are several VPS servers from which I ping each cloudflare server. As a result, it turns out that the VPS located closer to the CF, but having an average ping of 2ms, sends a request faster (it sends when it comes back, it doesn’t really matter to me) than the VPS, which is located much further to the CF, but at the same time having an average ping of 0.2ms. How does it happen and why?