The safety car has a pretty self-explanatory job in motorsports. It’s there to neutralise the field if there’s been a crash or another on-track mishap that the drivers involved can’t just drive away from, making sure both they and the people handling the cleanup are being kept safe.
Occasionally, though, there’ll be some sort of incident involving the safety car, causing things to go full Alanis Morissette. As a handy illustration, here are 11 examples of things going wrong for the safety car, or its close relative, the medical car. Oh, and don’t worry – while some of these look quite nasty, nobody was badly hurt in any of these incidents. Especially surprising considering the last one.
1. Mayländer’s Monza mistake
We begin at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix. Or rather three days before the 2024 Italian Grand Prix, before any F1 cars had even turned a wheel in anger on Monza’s fabled tarmac. On the Thursday before a GP weekend, Bernd Mayländer – the man who’s been driving the safety car in F1 since 2000 – always takes the car out for a routine systems check.
It’s not something we normally hear about, but Monza 2024 was a bit different, because heading into the iconic Parabolica corner, the Aston Martin Vantage safety car seemed to wiggle under braking, almost as if Mayländer had tried to initiate a rally-style Scandinavian flick (although it’s theorised that something had already gone wrong and this was just damage limitation). The car pirouetted gracefully through the gravel before sliding into, thankfully, an enormous wall of tyres and some extra foam padding.
2. Embarrassment for GM in Detroit
For select races of the 2018 IndyCar season, including at General Motors’ hometown of Detroit, Chevrolet was using its shiny new C7 Corvette ZR1 as the safety car.
However, the car ended up in the spotlight for the wrong reason in Detroit when, leading the field around ahead of the race start, the Corvette – driven by GM’s then product development head, now president, Mark Reuss – appeared to go light over a crest, fishtailing and slamming nose first into one of the street circuit’s unforgiving walls.
3. A case of poor timing
During the World Touring Car Championship’s visit to the twisty street circuit in the French city of Pau in 2009, the yellow flags were thrown and the safety car – a Chevrolet Cruze – immediately headed out of the pits, veering slowly to the left… and straight into the path of race leader Franz Engstler’s BMW 3-series.
A heavy impact resulted, taking Engstler out of the race and, unsurprisingly, leading to a red flag. It was later confirmed by the FIA that the safety car had not been given the authority to enter the track yet, but the incident nevertheless handed the win to Alain Menu, who was driving… a Chevrolet Cruze. A good one for the conspiracy theorists, this.
4. Burn, baby, burn
Seriously, what is it with Chevrolet safety cars? During the 2014 NASCAR Cup Series’ opening round – an exhibition race ahead of the marquis Daytona 500 – the Chevrolet SS pace car was leading the field away from a restart when suddenly, it accelerated and pulled off the banking.
Exactly why became clear moments later, when first smoke then flames started pouring from the car’s rear, and smoke also filled its cabin. Luckily, the driver was able to pull up near some fire marshals before anything got out of hand.
5. Another Daytona disaster
The 24 Hours of Daytona traditionally kicks off the annual circuit racing season, so you can imagine the organisers’ consternation ahead of the 2024 edition when this was the state of the safety car four hours before the green flag.
The BMW M3 had been leading the field of a historic sports car support race when the driver got things a bit wrong exiting the Daytona road course’s famous bus stop chicane. There’s no footage of the smash, but the pictures speak for themselves. Thankfully, as is usually the case, there was a backup safety car available.
6. Van Gisbergen gets intimate with a Porsche
You can always rely on the Australian Supercars championship (formerly V8 Supercars) for some entertainment, but it doesn’t normally take this form.
At the 2012 street race in Sydney, eventual three-time series champion Shane van Gisbergen was limping around with broken steering on his Ford Falcon. Meanwhile, the Porsche Panamera medical car was making its way around the course and tried to navigate around the stricken Falcon, only for it to suddenly veer left, straight into the Porsche’s path. Still, it’s an improvement on the first-gen Panamera’s styling.
7. Go, walk out the door
It was the Sunday morning warm-up session of the 2002 Brazilian Grand Prix when Enrique Bernoldi lost control of his Arrows and put it in the wall, causing the red flags to be thrown. The Mercedes C32 AMG medical car immediately made its way over to the scene.
At the same time, Nick Heidfeld was charging around, seemingly unaware that the red was out until he arrived on the scene. He managed to squeeze through the gap between the medical car and the armco, and that would have been that if medical car driver Alex Ribeiro hadn’t just opened the Merc’s door, which was almost ripped clean off by Heidfeld’s Sauber.
8. Looking Wurz for wear
This is a truly bizarre incident at a truly bizarre circuit – AVUS. The German F3 championship was visiting in 1995 when the Jeep Cherokee safety car was deployed to recover a car. While flags were out to indicate that the safety car was on track, the field was still running at pace.
Approaching Avus’ characteristically tight bottom hairpin, race leader and future F1 driver Alex Wurz dived ahead of the safety car to get on the racing line, only for the Jeep to not be able to slow in time, lock up its brakes and punt Wurz from behind, taking him out of the race. How this was even possible in the first place, we don’t know.
9. An astronomical cock-up
After none of the US big three wanted to supply a pace car for the 1971 Indianapolis 500, salvation came from local Chrysler dealer Eldon Palmer, who provided a Dodge Challenger, which he also ended up driving.
After setting the field on its merry way, he tried to follow instructions to match the speed set by the polesitter as he returned to the pits. The only thing is, the polesitter was going way faster than Palmer was ready for. At an estimated 125mph – with astronaut John Glenn as one of his passengers – he locked up the brakes, and slid straight into an elevated platform full of photographers, knocking it to the ground. Somehow, nobody was badly hurt.
10. A Monegasque muck-up
We end with not one, but two incidents courtesy of ’90s F1 pay driver extraordinaire/living meme Taki Inoue, who, in the years since his retirement, has embraced his less-than-stellar reputation as a racer.
The first came during practice at the 1995 Monaco Grand Prix, when Inoue, in circumstances that are unclear to this day, somehow managed to come together with the safety car in his Footwork. There’s no known footage of the crash, but there is of the safety car afterwards, a rather sad-looking Renault Clio Williams F2 rally car (side note: coolest safety car ever).
11. Taki versus Tatra
It was only a few races later, at the 1995 Hungarian Grand Prix, when Inoue experienced the incident that’s arguably defined his entire (admittedly short) F1 career since. When his Footwork died on lap 14, he pulled aside, jumped out and ran to get a fire extinguisher from the marshals – just in case.
He then ran back to his stricken car… straight into the path of the incoming Tatra medical car, which duly clobbered poor Taki, flipping him onto its bonnet. His leg was injured, but he was still back in the car for the next race two weeks later.
