During the 2022 Formula One season, the safety and medical vehicles will be supplied by Mercedes-AMG or Aston Martin. For the first two races of the season, the safe car is the Mercedes AMG GT Black Series, more or less a street-legal GT3 race car with 730hp and plenty of drag. In Australia’s Sunday grand openingHowever, the new Aston Martin V8 Vantage safety car has made its debut and drivers have had some complaints.
The 528hp twin-turbo V8 sports car has worse grip and far less power than the Merc it used to. Aston is said to be around 5 seconds slower per lap than its AMG counterpart. No fault of the safe driver Bernd Mayländer, the Aston Martin struggled in Albert Park when it entered service twice in 58 Grand Prix laps.
In later safety car deployments, for Sebastian Vettel’s solo crash on lap 23, many drivers switched to hard compound tyres. That tire has proven to be much harder to heat up, and below safe car speeds it’s nearly impossible to get the temperature up.
Max Verstappen had his say after retiring from Australia:
“There is very little grip and the safety car also drives very slowly, it’s like a turtle. Unbelievable. To drive 140 The rear was straight, there was not a single car damaged, so for some reason we had to drive so slowly. We have to investigate.
“For sure the Mercedes safety car will be faster because of the extra aero, because this Aston Martin is really slow. It definitely needs more grip, because our tires cold as ice.
“It is horrible that we are driving behind a safety vehicle at the moment.”
Australian GP winner Leclerc agrees the safety car moves too slowly for his liking, but keeps his opinion more reserved, as he has a front row seat for Maylander’s struggles with the car.
“I worked really hard to get some of the heat on them, so I worked hard too,” says Leclerc. “Honestly, I wanted to complain, but then I checked how much of an angle the safety car was sliding and I didn’t think he could come up with anything more so I didn’t want to put too much pressure on it. a lot of.
“Certainly with the cars we have now, it’s very difficult to keep the temperature in the tyres the back of the car is safe.
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Perhaps a 690 horsepower Aston Martin V12 Vantage would be the better answer for doing safety car duties from here on out? Or perhaps Aston could supply one of its Vantage GT3 race cars to pace the field. Surely that could do the trick.
