As if Aston Martin's Melbourne weekend wasn't nightmarish enough, Max Verstappen has even criticised the company's safety car.

Aston Martin and Mercedes provide the safety and medical cars at Grands Prix on an alternating basis, and at the Australian race it was the former's turn.

While the Aston Martin race cars were having the weekend from hell, with Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel suffering all manner of calamities, in the eyes of some the safety car fared no better.

As he and his fellow drivers sought to generate heat into their tyres Max Verstappen complained that the safety car was not going fast enough for him to effectively generate sufficient heat, consequently his post-race description of the green Vantage was hardly flattering.

"There's so little grip," said the Dutchman, "and also the safety car was driving so slow, it was like a turtle... unbelievable!

To drive 140 (km/h) on the back straight, there was not a damaged car, so I don't understand why we have to drive so slowly," he added. "We have to investigate.

"The Mercedes safety car is faster because of the extra aero, this Aston Martin is really slow," he continued. "It definitely needs more grip, because our tyres were stone cold.

"It's pretty terrible the way we are driving behind the safety car at the moment."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Greg, 13/04/2022 15:14

"Instead of street tyres which I believe are fitted to the safety car, why not put some race tyres on"

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2. Posted by TokyoAussie, 13/04/2022 3:39

"I guess the safety car is going too slow for the driver's liking, but it is the same for everyone."

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3. Posted by alistairmx, 13/04/2022 2:15

"I think it is time to get ri of tyre warmers as this is the only class that use them.
Indycar and sports cars don't need them and they race OK."

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4. Posted by Egalitarian, 12/04/2022 22:54

"This is not the first time a driver has made complaints about the lack of pace of the safety car. At the risk of sounding completely naive and believing that F1 and Liberty is actually about anything but the circus, perhaps the safety car should be less about marketing than keeping the following F1 cars at a decent pace. I would have thought a sponsor-free DTM or V8 Supercer equivalent could work."

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Verstappen critical of Aston Martin's safety car

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