‘I must not crash’ – F1’s Lawrence Barretto gets behind the wheel of Bernd Maylander’s Aston Martin Safety Car

In a rating of the world’s greatest jobs, Bernd Maylander’s distinctive function might be proper on the sharp finish. The 54-year-old is Components 1’s Security Automotive driver, the person charged with shepherding the world’s 20 greatest drivers on the planet’s greatest single-seaters with a highway automotive that you just or I might buy from an Aston Martin showroom.

Fairly cool, eh? Effectively, what’s even cooler (for me, at the very least) is that not solely would I get the possibility to drive his Aston Martin Vantage Security Automotive on a racetrack, however I am going to additionally vacate his workplace and swap seats for some Sizzling Laps so he can present me his day job…

It is an overcast day at Silverstone, the house of British motorsport, and I’ve simply pulled up into the automotive park adjoining to the venue’s infield Stowe Circuit. At 0.796 miles (1.73km) it could solely be a fifth of the size of the Grand Prix circuit that engulfs it and which hosts Components 1 every year in July – nevertheless it has all of the nook varieties and straights it’s worthwhile to push a automotive to the restrict.