Watch The BMW M5 MotoGP Safety Car Crash At COTA

Over the weekend, the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas played host to the United States Grand Prix. No, not that one, but the US GP for motorbikes, which are apparently a bit like cars but with two fewer wheels.

It was a chaotic race, with changeable conditions leading to multiple riders abandoning their wet-tyre-equipped bikes on the grid with minutes to go, dashing towards the pits to get their dry bikes in a scene that could only have been funnier if Yakety Sax had been played over the circuit’s PA.

Compounding the chaos, though, footage has emerged of the safety car having its own mishap on its routine sighting lap around the circuit prior to the race start.

BMW has supplied the MotoGP safety car since 1999, and for 2025, it’s offered up the new plug-in hybrid, 717bhp M5. The car appeared to have been on a routine sighting lap ahead of the race start (which would eventually be delayed) as fan-captured footage shows it entering the tight, complex section in the second half of COTA’s lap.

We initially see it getting a little loose out of the tight turn 13, before the back end breaks away altogether in the higher-speed turn 14. The M5 slides off and impacts the Armco nose-first, eventually coming to rest facing the wrong way.

It’s a rather unusual incident, all things considered. Although the new M5 can be run in rear-wheel drive only, it generally sends power to all four wheels. Whether the unnamed driver had disengaged the front axles or simply got a bit overenthusiastic on cold tyres and a damp surface, the most important thing is that nobody appears to have been badly hurt in the shunt.

It’s unclear at this point whether it was this safety car shunt, the comical grid situation, or a combination of both that led to the race start being red flagged and pushed back. Regardless, we can add this one to the list of times the safety car did the opposite of what its name suggests.