Aston Martin’s F1 safety car is dead: Mercedes takes the reins for 2026
After a five-year stint, Aston Martin is handing the reins to Mercedes-AMG for Formula 1 safety and medical car duties
Aston Martin joined Mercedes-AMG in 2021 as a joint supplier of safety and medical cars for the Formula 1 calendar, but after five years in the spotlight, this deal has come to an end. The British marque has pulled out of the supply deal to hand all responsibility back to Mercedes-AMG, but precisely why isn’t yet known.
Lacklustre financial performance in recent years certainly won’t make projects such as this easy to justify for Aston Martin, but the exposure it’s received in return hasn’t all been good either. While more recent models have rectified some of these issues, there was controversy around earlier Vantage safety cars with numerous drivers complaining about the lack of pace at the 2022 Australian Grand Prix.
> Aston Martin Vantage safety car driven – the road car F1 cars can't overtake
We got behind the wheel of the latest Vantage safety car ourselves and we certainly weren’t asking for much more performance from a driver’s perspective. The most recent Aston Martin safety car was based on the Vantage S, producing 671bhp and 590lb ft of torque for a 3.4sec 0-62mph time and 202mph top speed – those numbers aren’t far from those of the (now discontinued) AMG GT Black Series Mercedes is reportedly using for the 2026 season, although this car is over 100kg lighter than the Aston.
Mercedes has plenty of past form supplying F1 safety cars going back to 1996. It will also take responsibility for medical car duties, with Aston Martin also pulling its DBX707 SUV from the programme. Details are yet to be confirmed, but AMG is likely to run an AMG GT 63 S four-door for this use, a saloon with over 630bhp. Oddly, like the Black Series, this car is also now discontinued.
Whether or not this development has any relation to Aston Martin’s overall commitment to the sport is not yet known. We do expect drivers to be more satisfied with the pace of the safety car and would have been whether it was an Aston or a Mercedes, thanks to the expectation that the new-generation racers will be slower than last year’s cars.
