Image: Aston Martin Lagonda Media.
It was recently announced that to break the trend of Mercedes providing safety cars for the 2021 Formula One season, Aston Martin would step in and provide a V8 Vantage as the main race safety car and a DBX as the medical car.
Both are powered by 4.0 litre twin-turbocharged V8 engines provided by the AMG division at Mercedes Benz. In the safety cars, each engine produces a little bit more power than the standard customer cars and are extensively modified to cater for the marshals who will be riding in them when needed.
However, as cool as it is to see Aston Martin making a move like this in motorsport, I can't help but feel somewhat underwhelmed slightly.
Image: Aston Martin Lagonda Media.
The V8 Vantage, whilst it is a distinctive thing, hasn't necessarily had the best reception from motoring enthusiasts. From its polarising styling to the Germanic engine, it's had a tricky time in production with no real success boom unlike its more elegant predecessor.
If making the Vantage an F1 safety car is going to generate attention for the brand, it seems pretty desperate to do so if they couldn't captivate their existing customers already. Astons are supposed to speak for themselves and generate sales on their own - that's what made the old Vantage and the DB9 so successful. They were simple, elegant beasts with styling that would make Kiera Knightley worry about her career.
Things aren't quite the same with their current line-up - and it's clear that the brand is losing sales because of it.
Image: Aston Martin Lagonda Media.
If Aston really wanted to make an impact and prove their brand worth, surely it would've made more sense to have one of their more prestigious models as the race safety car? A DB11 or DBS for instance? I say this because if a brand was going to take on a role in motorsport, surely you'd want to showcase the best of what your engineers were capable of? Mercedes went by that logic with their safety cars; it was always a flagship SL63 or SLS that waved the yellow flags rather than a base model E-Class.
As for the DBX, that to me seems like an odd choice for a medical car. Traditionally, the role went to a Mercedes estate of some sort. I.e. a C63 AMG or some of the older ones, depending on the year. Obviously, Aston don't have an estate car in their line-up, hence why the DBX took the spot for practicality reasons.
It's great for brand PR, but as per the reasons for the Vantage, surely it would've been cooler to have one of the special Zagato shooting brakes as the medical car? There would be so many more 'oooos' from the audience as they'd be intrigued as to what that brand offers.
Image: Aston Martin Lagonda Media.
It's probably obvious that the two cars were respectively chosen so the audience could see what Aston Martin can immediately offer to customers, while at the same time, gaining more media attention via F1 coverage.
But it has to be questioned that if Aston really wanted to showcase what they were capable of, why they didn't opt for a pair of upper models instead?