We petrolheads, we are addicts of speed and the sheer exhilaration it provides makes us grin with the widest smiles we have ever had, every single time. Thus no wonder, we are hooked to every sort of motorsports event out there and we have lived through years of following these spectacular machines go beyond the limits of performance through tough competitive environments to come out victorious and we have seen them converting into legends that will be remembered forever. We have read about, heard about, and talked about the greatest moments of motorsport history on lengths and sadly we have also witnessed horrific crashes that many a times have led to fatalities or serious injuries, thereby gives us all a reality check about the inherent risks and dangers that show themselves out in the open in all their rawness every now and then on the race circuit. Racing is, by design a highly dangerous sport to be addicted to, whether you are a participant or a spectator doesn’t matter, the dangers are real and lives are at stake, very single moment. And this is where the significance of a Safety Car in a racing event comes into picture. But then, being dedicated to safety doesn’t mean you have to be dull and boring, and trust us, these Safety Cars, dull and boring there are not, in fact they posses some of the most advanced technological and mechanical innovation’s to have ever been implemented on ‘normal’ production cars and there have been some absolute brilliant cars over the years that have doubled as Safety cars over the years. Here is the list of Five Best Safety Cars of All Time according to us.
In essence, the true responsibility of a Safety Car is to slow the racing cars or motorcycles down to a reasonable speed when something obscures the track or the weather lowers visibility or simple it becomes to treacherous to let the racing continue at usual pace. The aim of the safety car is to enable the clearance of any obstruction under safer conditions, and to especially make sure that the marshals working on the track remain safe from the high speed racing. As per the rules, when the safety car is called upon for its duty, it is supposed to enter the track in front of the race leader and normally during the time when the Safety car is under implementation no overtaking is allowed and every participant is required to follow the safety car under the assigned speeds while staying in the positions they were racing when the safety car came into effect. The normal racing can only go underway when the safety car leaves the track. Interestingly, the first ever recorded use of a safety car during a racing event was at the 1911 Indy 500. Saying that, it is time we discuss about the Five Best Safety Cars of All Time we have shortlisted for you.
Five Best Safety Cars of All Time:
Porsche 914 – Formula 1’s first safety car – 1973:
Starting off our list of Five Best Safety Cars of All Time is the Porsche 914. The first ever time a safety car was introduced in a Formula 1 season was in 1973 and during that year’s Canadian GP, a year that was marred by a staggeringly huge number of crashes that season. However, the beginning of safety car outing in Formula 1 was a rather a spectacle of epic bad proportions, the driver of the safety car had placed his car in front of the wrong competitor thus causing part of the field to be one lap down incorrectly, this caused a huge issue in figuring out times and final race positions, in fact it took several hours after the race to figure out the winner and final results. After this debacle, it took almost 20 years before Formula 1 regularized the use of Safety Cars during racing in 1993.
Lamborghini Countach: Monte Carlo Gran prix – 1983:
Most certainly the coolest car in our Five Best Safety Cars of All Time belonged to the glorious 80’s. The 80s were possibly the greatest times at Formula 1, when it was still about very fast, fairly unsafe racing cars driven by men with no care for safety and who possessed a special kind of grit and cool quotient that will forever remain unmatched. And among all the glamour of those times, the peak of the game came every year at none other than the Monaco Gran Prix and in 1983, this iconic and glamorous racetrack got a complimenting glamorous course car, a red Lamborghini Countach which was as exotic the safety cars ever were and it turned plenty of heads during Grand Prix at Monaco during the early 1980s. The V12-powered Countach powered by its mad mad V12 engine set a benchmark in supercar history, and so it did in the history of course cars and they have never looked that cool again and probably they never will.
Porsche 993 GT2 – Belgian Gran Prix – 1995:
If there was any car which could have come any closer to the absolute cool aura of the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix Lamborghini Countach Safety car, then it was the 1995 Belgian Gran Prix Porsche 993 GT2 Safety car. And, that 911 GT2 was charismatically super-safety car. This car is a definite addition to our five best safety cars of all time list for it arguably was among the last of the absolutely hardcore air cooled Porsche 911’s this car acted as the safety car in a race which is remembered for a tough dogfight for the lead between Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill in 1995.
For representation purpose only
The Mercedes Dominance:
Since 1997, for last two decades Mercedes Benz has been providing the safety cars for the Formula 1 Racing without stop and over the years some of the most iconic cars in recent times wearing the three pointed star have adored the safety hat and awed the spectators the world over. The most iconic of them all and a sure hot contender for a place in our five best safety cars of all times list is surely the stunning and the absolutely mesmerizing Mercedes SLS AMG with its gullwing doors that was the Formula 1 safety car for 5 years in arrow from 2010 to 2015 until the all new and breathtakingly gorgeous Mercedes AMG GT S relieved it from its duties.
BMW M4 GTS MotoGP Safety Car – 2015 MotoGP Season:
Now this is one car that has to be mentioned in this list of Five Best Safety Cars of All Time without any doubt whatsoever. And this 2015 BMW M4 GTS MotoGP Safety Car would have just got itself entered into this special list on the basis of its colour scheme only, when the world over Safety cars decided to approach the silver and white, basically soft and subtle shades, the 2015 BMW M4 GTS MotoGP Safety Car arrived in an absolutely fetching matt black paintwork and with those incredible MotoGP safety car sticking all around it, the car looked more like ready to start a brawl then to take any sort of safety in mind. It was not all, the car came equipped with a technology that was revolutionary for production cars as it was introducing an experimental and exceptional water-injected version of BMW’s turbocharged six-cylinder engine, it was a technology that was reserved to many high octane racing machines till the M$ GTS decided to show it off in style on the MotoGP circuit, thereby paving way for the tech’s use in mass production sooner than later.
Apart from this, the 2015 BMW M4 GTS MotoGP Safety Car made sure that it filled all the requirements of being a safety car for MotoGP’s unhinged biking talent that needed it to be a bit quick and tasty and always ready to match up with the insanity the racing motorcycle prototypes are capable of at MotoGP. What a car! What an amazing car this 2015 BMW M4 GTS MotoGP Safety Car and it probably was also the most good looking safety car till date too.
So this was our list of the five best Safety Cars of all time, do let us know what you think of it and tell in the comments section below if we have missed any car which we should have not missed in this list.
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