There is a driver in Formula 1 who has never won a race, never made an overtake and never wanted to. His name is Bernd Mayländer, he is German, and in March 2026, in Melbourne, he celebrated his 500th Grand Prix behind the wheel of the safety car. He had started in 2000, in Australia too. In a quarter of a century he has seen champions, regulations and generations of cars come and go, and he has always been there: ahead of everyone, but never racing.

The F1 safety car is the car that race control sends onto the track when the race has to be neutralised, because of a crash, debris on the tarmac or rain. The drivers line up behind it, cannot overtake and lap at reduced speed until the track is safe again. Then the safety car returns to the pits and the race restarts.

Put like that, it sounds like a pause. In reality it is one of the moments when a Grand Prix can change completely.

When the safety car comes out

The decision belongs to the race director. The safety car is deployed when there is a hazard that marshals need to clear while the race is still running: a car stopped in an exposed position, debris on the racing line, barriers to repair, or rain so heavy that racing becomes too risky. The drivers get the signal on the light panels and on their steering wheel, the marshals show yellow flags with the SC board, and from that moment nobody can attack.

The reason is simple: bunching the field up and lowering the speed allows work on track without stopping everything. If the situation is too serious to be handled this way, race control shows the red flag and the race is suspended.

The rules behind the safety car

Once on track, the safety car takes the lead of the race and the cars queue up behind it. The main rules are these:

• overtaking is forbidden, with very few exceptions, for example when a driver slows down because of a problem;
• the pit lane stays open, which is why a safety car is often the ideal moment to change tyres: you lose far less time than at racing speed, as the strategists making the calls from the pit wall know very well;
• when race control considers it safe, lapped cars receive the message that they may unlap themselves: they pass the leader and the safety car and rejoin the back of the queue;
• on the last lap of the neutralisation the safety car switches off the orange lights on its roof and enters the pits; the leader decides when to accelerate and the race resumes, but nobody can overtake before the control line.

The rule on lapped cars produced the most famous controversy in recent history. In Abu Dhabi in 2021, on the final lap that decided the championship, race control let through only the lapped cars that were between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen. Verstappen, on fresher tyres, restarted right behind the Mercedes, passed it and won the title. Since then the regulations have been rewritten: if cars unlap, all lapped cars must do so, not just some of them.

Until 2025 there was one more detail at the restart: DRS stayed disabled for one lap (until 2023 it was two). Since 2026 DRS no longer exists, but the logic is the same: whoever restarts better gains, whoever gets distracted loses.

The virtual safety car

Sometimes the real safety car is not needed. For smaller problems, since 2015 there has been the virtual safety car: no car on track, but every driver must slow down and respect a minimum time in each sector, checked electronically. The gaps between cars stay roughly the same and nobody can overtake.

It was introduced after Jules Bianchi’s accident at Suzuka in 2014, when his Marussia went off in the rain and hit a recovery vehicle that was removing another car. Bianchi died nine months later. This is exactly what the virtual safety car is for: forcing everyone to slow down immediately, without waiting for the field to gather behind a car.

A story that began in 1973

The first safety car in Formula 1 came out at the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix, in the rain: it was a Porsche 914 driven by Eppie Wietzes. It was not a happy debut. The car pulled out in front of the wrong driver, the field got mixed up, and it took hours after the chequered flag to work out who had won.

The safety car only became an official part of the rules in 1993. Since then it has had many faces, but one above all: Mercedes, which first took to the track at the 1996 French Grand Prix and in 2026 celebrated thirty years in the role. From 2021 to 2025 the duties were shared with Aston Martin, which provided the Vantage. Aston Martin’s contract expired at the end of 2025 and in January 2026 the brand confirmed it would not renew it: no official reason was given, but according to the press economic considerations played a part, in a year when the team had plenty of other things to think about.

The 2026 safety car

In 2026 Mercedes was left on its own, and halfway through the season it changed car. The Mercedes-AMG GT 63 PRO 4MATIC+ made its debut at the Hungarian Grand Prix at the end of July, replacing the GT Black Series that had been in service since 2022. It is the fourteenth safety car supplied by the German manufacturer and the first with variable all-wheel drive.

The numbers are impressive for a car that is not supposed to win anything: a 4-litre twin-turbo V8, 612 horsepower, 0 to 100 km/h in 3.1 seconds and a top speed of 317 km/h in standard form. It has less power than the Black Series, but puts it down better, especially in the wet. Alongside it works the medical car, a Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4MATIC+.

Why so much power? Because there are Formula 1 cars behind it, and a Formula 1 car going too slowly loses temperature in its tyres and brakes. The faster the safety car, the more heat stays in tyres and brakes and the better the cars handle the restart.

Why the safety car is also marketing

Every time the safety car comes out, for a few laps it becomes one of the most televised cars of the broadcast. It leads the field, appears in every replay and carries the brand on its bonnet and its sides. It is no coincidence that Mercedes has held this role for thirty years, and that Aston Martin took it on precisely in the years of its return to Formula 1 as a team.

It is an example of how, in this sport, visibility does not come only from the cars’ liveries. Being an official supplier is also a form of Formula 1 sponsorship, with a rare advantage: the product does not just appear on screen, it is used on track in front of Formula 1’s global TV audience. Far better than an advert.