As an automaker, there is one way to ensure that your car leads the Formula 1 field at some point each season: build the safety car.
For this reason, Bernd Maylander is often jokingly referred to as one of the most successful racing drivers you’ve never heard of. He has led Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel at their peak. That was of course because he has been the sport’s official safety car driver since 2000.
The first safety car in Formula 1 was a yellow Porsche 914 that was used in the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix. Two bright yellow flags were placed on the back to indicate the purpose.
However, its use was far from flawless as the vehicle failed to correctly identify the race director during a series of pit stops.
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New season, new toys. This weekend, the Aston Martin DBX will be unveiled as our medical car.
This is the biggest and most exciting change we’ve made to our medical and rescue operations in F1.
Look out for us in the back of the grid ???????? # astonmartin #dbx pic.twitter.com/qElZLY43GK
– Alan van der Merwe (@alanvdm) March 24, 2021
The mistake wasn’t noticed until after the race, when it turned out that winner Peter Reveson had won a lap on the field because the safety car had missed him. The result was there.
The mistake meant that drivers and teams weren’t particularly interested in the idea and didn’t become a staple of a Grand Prix weekend until the early 1990s, when a family-sized Fiat and even a Ford Escort were used as safety cars.
In the 21st century, we’ve gotten used to Maylander driving a high-performance Mercedes around at the head of the field, with the team paying for the cost of maintenance and production in exchange for the marketing value of its exposure.
The team that has dominated the top of the grid in terms of both racing cars and security vehicles, however, won’t make it its own way in 2021.
Aston Martin, who has recently returned to the grid after owner Lawrence Stroll recruited the Racing Point team, will join them.
Your safety car with British racing green will be a modified Aston Martin Vantage with a four-liter twin-turbo V8 engine and will be used on 12 of the planned 23 race weekends in 2021.
You’ll also drive a DBX ambulance driven by Alan van der Merwe, who became famous when his vehicle was on the scene for the first time last year to treat Romain Grosjean after a terrible accident in Bahrain.
The Mercedes Safety Car has been given a new paint job for 2021 (Photo: AFP)
Mercedes will still be at the top if the race is neutralized, as it has done for the other eleven races this year over the past two decades, although it will look different from the car we have gotten used to.
Instead of driving a silver Mercedes every other week, Maylander will be in a red car with the same badge. The 2021 Mercedes safety car will be an AMG GT R with a similar bi-turbo four-liter V8 engine as its Aston Martin counterpart, while the medical car on the weekends will be a C63 S Estate.
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