BERND MAYLÄNDER

Formula 1 safety car driver

- by JAMES TAYLOR

The man who has led more laps than many F1 champions reflects on a career that transitioned from self-taught Nordschleife enthusiast to the sport's most permanent fixture

WHICH DRIVER HAS DRIVEN AT THE MOST Formula 1 Grand Prix events over the last 26 years? Alonso? Hamilton? Vettel? Technically, the answer is Bernd Mayländer. The genial German has been the official F1 safety car driver since 2000, scrambled to slow the pack hundreds of times and led more than 1400 Grand Prix laps in the process. And that's not counting his safety car duties for the rest of the F1 programme. 'When I started there were 16 races and we had to cover two championships,' he says. 'Now we cover F2, F3, Porsche Supercup, F1 Academy, and preseason testing. I used to arrive at 4pm on Friday for the drivers' briefing; things have changed a lot. But that's the modern time, and it's great.'

Before the safety car became his office, Mayländer had a very successful career as a racing driver, but he took an unconventional route into the sport. Apart from a little karting for fun, he concentrated on playing tennis as a teenager. His first car was a diesel Volkswagen Golf, but he quickly graduated to a BMW 320i cabrio: 'A car that was maybe strange for an 18-year-old boy to drive in 1989, but it was a special collection car and my mother bought it as a kind of present. My older sister drove it too. Luckily my father was into cars and I was allowed to drive all his cars as well. I was always safe and behaved in them.' Very apt, given his future career. 'It was a really good time.'

Not least because he was exercising the cars on the Nordschleife. 'When I got my driving licence, that was the moment I went to the Nürburgring, in public driving sessions. Luckily, I always kept my father's car in one piece, because he was my supporter. Without my parents I wouldn't be doing what I am doing today.'