How Mercedes-AMG pips F1 pack
It took Mercedes-Benz to make a success of the Formula 1 safety car concept. Damien O’Carroll gets a taste of the latest one.
You will know that in the 2016 Formula 1 World Championship, the Mercedes-AMG F1 W07, Ferrari SF16-H and the Red Bull RB12 each led laps during the season.
But here’s a fun F1 fact: there was only one other car that also led laps. A grand total of 26 of them.
In fact, aside from those three it was the only other car to lead a lap in the 2016 season. Yet it received no constructors points. And strangely, it was the only V8 in the pack.
I recently spent a week driving this car. I would have to say that it’s the most easily accessible car to line up on the F1 grid, except for the fact that it doesn’t actually line up on the grid. It leads the other cars to the grid, then waits patiently until it is needed again.
Surely you don’t need any more clues? I’m talking about the Mercedes-AMG GT S that acts as the official FIA Safety Car in F1.
To say that the AMG GT is a truly ferocious car would be something of an understatement. It is a car that covers a deeply impressive spectrum of abilities, ranging from the placid and quiet nana mode, right up to fully feral, bellowing bogan mode.
Those aren’t the official names, by the way; Mercedes prefers Comfort and Race, but mine are more accurate.
Forget nana mode, because it simply doesn’t matter with this car anyway. Yeah, it’s a Mercedes, so you get the expected behaviour around town when responsible adults are looking, but bogan mode is what its really all about.
The twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 has a vocal range from threatening rumble, right up to a startlingly angry barrel-chested big-block roar, easily making it the bestsounding car on a current F1 circuit.
Nail the throttle and you would swear there was something way bigger than 4.0-litres lurking under the long, wide bonnet, as a thoroughly antisocial roar is matched by eye-wateringly brutal acceleration.
The expected indignant explosion accompanies every gear shift in bogan mode, with a volley of cracks and pops issuing forth on the downshift, meaning that leaving it in this mode around town is an hilarious exercise in scaring the unaware and impressing other bogans.
The GT’s V8 sits behind the front axle, making it technically midengined and also blessing it with staggeringly good balance and handling. Utterly ferocious power delivery and utterly composed handling make the GT massive fun to throw around and the perfect car to lead the F1 pack.
Before Mercedes took over the role, the F1 safety car had a mixed history to say the least.
While we think of the safety car as a standard fixture of F1 these days, the first time one was used in the sport as late as 1973, and it hardly covered itself in glory. The car used was a yellow Porsche 914, it was used only once that season at the Canadian Grand Prix and it was a total disaster.
The use of a safety car was decided upon following several crashes during the 1973 season, including one that claimed the life of Roger Williamson. Thus the hapless Porsche was sent out following a big crash between Jody Scheckter and Francois Cevert to let the ambulances get to the scene, and so marshals could clean up the debris.
Unfortunately when the driver of the Porsche came out in front of what he thought was the leading driver, he was actually in front of the seventh-place driver – New Zealand’s own Howden Ganley. There was massive confusion about places and pitstops, with officials eventually awarding the win to Peter Revson.
After that particular debacle, a safety car wasn’t officially used again until 1993 when a Fiat Tempra was used at the Brazilian GP due to heavy rain.
In 1994 an Opel Vectra was used at the San Marino GP which, rather controversially, has copped some of the blame for the death of F1 great Ayrton Senna.
The argument goes that the Vectra was far too slow for the following F1 cars, leaving them unable to maintain suitable temperature in their tyres. This in turn caused Senna’s Williams to bottom out and crash.
Needless to say, the safety car wasn’t exactly covering itself in glory in F1 at this stage. Adding to this was Japanese driver Taki Inoue getting hit by a marshal’s car at the 1995 Hungarian GP (not a safety car, as is often claimed, however).
While that’s a great comedy moment on You Tube today, at the time it just added to the idea that non-F1 cars on track at F1 races weren’t a good thing.
However, this changed in 1996 when a car powerful enough to lead the pack – a Porsche 911 GT3 – was used. Another, a MercedesBenz C 36 AMG, was used a few races later.
The following year the FIA inked a deal with Mercedes-Benz to supply an official safety car to the series, the first of which was the CLK 55.
The CLK 55 stayed in place until the 2000 season, when it was replaced by a CL 55, and since then a succession of MercedesBenz AMG models have led the pack, including an SL 55 (2001), another CLK 55 (2003), a CLK 63 (2006), an SL 63 (2008), the mighty SLS (2010) and an even mightier SLS GT (2012) before the current hero of the range, the SLS’s little brother – the GT – took over at the 2015 Australian Grand Prix.
Mercedes-Benz brought about the current image of the safety car being an island of sanity in the frantic pace of F1, a chance to slow down (but still go fast enough to keep the tyre temps up) and take a breath.
So it is somewhat ironic that the current face of sanity in F1 is an utter berko-crazy maniac on the streets.
We have to love it for that.