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

In a ranking of the world's best jobs, Bernd Maylander's unique role will be right at the sharp end. The 54-year-old is Formula 1's Safety Car driver, the man charged with shepherding the world's 20 best drivers in the world's best single-seaters with a road car that you or I could purchase from an Aston Martin showroom.

Pretty cool, eh? Well, what's even cooler (for me, at least) is that not only would I get the chance to drive his Aston Martin Vantage Safety Car on a racetrack, but I'll also vacate his office and swap seats for some Hot Laps so he can show me his day job...

It's an overcast day at Silverstone, the home of British motorsport, and I've just pulled up into the car park adjacent to the venue's infield Stowe Circuit. At 0.796 miles (1.73km) it may only be a fifth of the length of the Grand Prix circuit that engulfs it and which hosts Formula 1 each year in July – but it has all the corner types and straights you need to push a car to the limit.