Bernd Mayländer
At the end of the 1980s, this trained industrial clerk, who was born in Waiblingen near Stuttgart, took his first steps in motorsport. After a relatively short phase in karting and Formula Ford, he was involved in Porsche Clubsport as early as 1990 and entered the Porsche Supercup via the Porsche Carrera Cup, in which he won the overall title in 1994. He also competed in a number of endurance races in 1994 and 1995, mainly in the USA, in a Porsche 911.
in 1995, he made his debut in the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) and the International Touring Car Championship (ITC) with the Persson Motorsport team, where he secured 12 championship points in an AMG Mercedes C-Class DTM. In the 1996 season, the last under Class 1 regulations, he scored 17 points.
The following year, Mayländer was given a place in the Mercedes line-up for the FIA GT Championship. Together with Klaus Ludwig and Bernd Schneider, he won the Spielberg round in a Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR and finished in 13th place in the overall championship standings. In 1998, he joined the Persson Motorsport team and, together with Christophe Bouchut in the CLK-GTR, achieved two fourth places at the Dijon-Prénois and Suzuka rounds as his best results of the season.
In 1999, he turned back to Porsche racing series and celebrated one of his greatest triumphs the following year by winning the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring in a Porsche 996 GT3.
With the Manthey-Racing team, the Swabian returned to the newly designed DTM in 2001. Driving an AMG-Mercedes CLK-DTM, he won the last race of the season in Hockenheim and collected 28 championship points, which put him in 11th place in the final drivers' standings.
The second season with Manthey-Racing, on the other hand, remained without points, a fate that also befell Mayländer in 2003, when he was back at the wheel for Persson Motorsport in a CLK-DTM. In 2004, he joined Team Rosberg, but once again failed to score any championship points with his CLK-DTM.
However, his participation in a world record drive on the high-speed circuit in Laredo, Texas, in May 2005 landed him in the history books. Mayländer was one of a total of 18 drivers to cover a total distance of 100,000 miles at an average of 224.823 km/h in three standard E 320 CDI E-Class Saloons during a continuous 30-day round-the-clock test.
A native of Waibling, Mayländer was also making a name for himself in the top class of motorsport – since 2000, he has been a competent regular driver of the official Formula 1 Safety Car, which has been provided by Mercedes-AMG since 1996.