MEMORABLE DUTCH GRAND PRIX
Zandvoort and the Dutch Grand Prix joined the Formula 1 World Championship in its third edition, in 1952. There, Ferrari and Alberto Ascari extended their winning run that ended with nine consecutive Grand Prix wins and soon the circuit build next to the dunes of Zandvoort’s beach became a feature in the calendar.
Financial issues kept the race out of the calendar three times in the 1950’s – showing that hosting Formula 1 races has always been expensive for privateers – but from 1958 until 1985 Zandvoort was an integral part of the World Championship, featuring in many historic moments.
Lack of finance, again, led to the loss of the race, the track was eventually shortened, as the northern part of the circuit was sold to real estate developers. Then, at the height of “Max-mania”, Zandvoort returned to the calendar right on the year Verstappen won his first title and will remain part of the Formula 1 schedule until the end of next season. Then, again, with no public funding for carrying on, the promoters will leave the World Championship to make way for public funded races elsewhere around the globe.
1967 – CLARK STARTS COSWORTH’S DOMINATION
The 1967 Dutch Grand Prix has gone down in the history books as the first where the Ford Cosworth DFV V8 engine competed, and promptly won, in what was the start of a 15 years’ period dominated by the Keith Duckworth and Frank Costin designed engine.
Lotus’ domination of Formula 1 between 1963 and 1965 had been brought to an abrupt end when the FIA pushed for three-litre engines to replace the 1,5 litre engines that had been used for the previous five years.
Doubting the rules would actually change, no one was really ready for the change but as it went through, only Jack Brabham and his team were in relative good shape. Ferrari’s new engines were suffering from poor reliability, BMR’s complicated H-shaped 16 cylinders was very fragile and the rest of the field had to make do with modified two-litre Climax engines or underpowered Maserati ones. No wonder Brabham easily secured his third title and the following year his team mate Denny Hulme was proving to be his only real opposition.
By then, though, Lotus’ Colin Chapman and Cosworth’s Keith Duckworth had convinced Ford CEO Walter Hayes to finance the development of a new engine and the DFV V8 made its debut in Zandvoort, on the third round of the season.
Graham Hill, driving the second Lotus, secured an easy pole position, half a second ahead of the competition, but team leader Jim Clark was only eighth on the grid, having problems with the new engine’s metering unit.
On race day, though, the boot was on the other foot, for Hill retired after only 11 laps with engine problems, while Clark made very quick progress through the field, hit the front shortly after his team mate’s retirement and went on to win by more than 23 seconds, the Brabham duo only joining him at the podium after seeing the great Scot pull away easily from them on Zandvoort’s long pits straight.
This was just the beginning for Cosworth, who still had to eliminate some teething problems on its engine until the end of the year but, from 1968 until 1982 won 12 drivers’ championships out of 16 – Matra, in 1969, and Ferrari in 1975, 1977 and 1979 won the other three – becoming the most dominant ever engine in Formula 1 history.
1975 – A FIRST FOR JAMES HUNT
Ferrari had returned to the front of the field in 1974, after a disastrous campaign the previous year and if it was the experienced Clay Regazzoni who fought for the title with Emerson Fittipaldi, his younger team mate Niki Lauda had made it clear he was the quickest of the two and quickly became the Scuderia’s de facto number one driver.
Starting the season with the old car, the Austrian got into his stride once the revolutionary 312T (for transversal gearbox!) became available and was properly sorted out, winning three Grand Prix in a row. Lauda arrived at Zandvoort ten points ahead of Brabham’s Carlos Reutemann and eleven ahead of champion Fittipaldi, while his friend and former housemate James Hunt had been second in the opening round but scored just one more point prior to the Dutch Grand Prix.
The Englishman drove for the peculiar Hesketh team, led by the excentric Lord Alexander Hesketh.
Around since the middle of 1973, the small private team caught everyone’s attention with its lavish parties, the yachts and the helicopters, but also by the small group of staff gathering behind the pits before the start of every Grand Prix, to form a circle and “pray to the great chicken in the sky…”
On track, though, Hesketh was a serious contender, and Hunt had been on the podium a few times since the end of 1973. The new 308B was quick but unreliable and in Zandvoort Hunt qualified third, behind the two Ferrari. On paper this looked like another straightforward Lauda win but “the great chicken in the sky” gave a helping hand, a massive thunderstorm delaying the start of the race and meaning the track was still quite wet early on.
A careful Lauda led from the start while Hunt lost a few places and then decided to swap for slick tyres early, on lap 7, quickly followed by other contenders. Ferrari, whoever, wanted to play safe and only called Lauda in six laps later. There was some “casino” in the Italian’s pit as then Team Manager Luca di Montezemolo had been run over by Ronnie Peterson in the pit lane the lap before, as the flamboyant Italian crossed the pit lane without looking, so Lauda lost a few seconds but was still in second place, behind Hunt, when he resumed.
The main problem for the Austrian, however, was not his boss’ broken leg, it was having Jean-Pierre Jarier behind and the Frenchman, already on slicks for a while, quickly got ahead of the Ferrari and stayed there for 30 long laps. When Lauda eventually move up to second place, Hunt was almost ten seconds down the road, but the 312T’s superior pace helped the championship leader to catch in just 20 laps.
Willing to get his fourth win on the trot, Lauda attacked Hunt on a few occasions, drawing alongside the Hesketh on the run down to the famous Tarzan Curve, without ever being able to make the pass stick. He was also more careful than his rivals while lapping back markers, have to recover lost ground on three occasions and eventually settled for P2, extending his lead over Reutemann in the championship.
For James Hunt this was the watershed moment his career badly needed, as he proved he was not only quick but also capable of managing a whole race, in difficult conditions, without making mistakes and when Fittipaldi sensationally left McLaren at the end of the year to join his family-run Copersucar team, the Englishman was the logical choice to replace the Brazilian. He then went on to win the championship in 1976, but that’s part of another story.
For Hesketh, though, this was a short-lived glorious moment. With costs mounting and unable to find sponsors, Lord Alexander shut down the shop at the end of the year and left the sport, his cars and all the material being sold to team manager “Bubbles” Horsley, who, for the next two and a half seasons ran a raft if pay drivers without scoring another point.
1979 – VILLENEUVE MAKES YOU DREAM
Ferrari was very much a factor again in 1979, with veteran Jody Scheckter and the younger Gilles Villeneuve fighting for the title against Ligier’s Jacques Laffite. Ground effect cars were now filling the entire grid, after Lotus had shown the way in the previous two seasons and the development of the technology was coming thick and fast.
Perennial back markers Williams had made their breakthrough with the FW07 and after teething issues were resolved won three races in a row, the first with Clay Regazzoni in Silverstone, the next two with the much quicker Alan Jones.
Having split the wins with Ligier in the first part of the season, Ferrari was barely hanging on at the front, but benefited from Patrick Depailler’s season ending hand gliding accident, as veteran Jacky Ickx, who had been drafted in as replacement, wasn’t enjoying his time driving a wing car.
The power of the Italian V12 engine helped in Zandvoort’s long straight, Scheckter and Villeneuve qualifying on the third row of the grid, right in front of Ligier’s Jaques Laffite. Williams and Renault occupied the first two rows, but their challenges were halved at the start when Regazzoni ran into the back of pole sitter Arnoux’s car, both retiring on the spot.
Having passed Jabouille on the first lap, Villeneuve made it from sixth to second in the early stages of the Dutch Grand Prix, while Scheckter had nearly stalled and came around towards the back of the field, in P19, at the end of the first lap – the perfect scenario for the Canadian.
The way the rules were written in 1979, Jones was no longer a title contender. The season was split in two halves, seven races for the first, eight for the second, with the four best results of each half counting for the championship. Jones had scored only four points in the first half, so even with four wins in the second he couldn’t secure more than 40 points. Has Scheckter had scored 30 points in the first half, all he needed was 11 points in the second one to get out of the Australian’s reach – not a difficult task.
Sitting behind the Williams, Villeneuve could have well sit there the whole race and cut the gap to his team mate, but that’s not the way the Canadian raced. On lap 11 he seized the race lead and pulled a small gap on Jones. The Australian, though, knew the abrasive Dutch tarmac combined with the fast corners at the back of the circuit put a lot of strain on the tyres and was saving them for later on.
Eventually Villeneuve’s rear tyres started to lose grip, and he spun out of the lead on lap 47, resuming in second place and with no threat from behind. Scheckter, though, had recovered to P3 and was minimizing his losses. Then, on lap 51, things went from bad to worse for the little Canadian, as the left rear tyre of his 312T4 blew up and he spun coming into the Tarzan Curve.
That would have been game over for any other driver, but not for Villeneuve. He managed to get himself out of the sandy run off area and proceeded to drive as quickly as he could back to the pits to get new tyres. But once he finally stopped in the Ferrari box, the damage was so big, the left rear wheel hanging on by a thread to the car, that retirement was inevitable. Scheckter inherited second place and secured the title the following race, in Monza, but it was Villeneuve’s antics that remained in everyone’s memory for ever.
1985 – LAUDA’S LAST WIN
McLaren was the dominant force in Formula 1 in the mid-eighties, with Niki Lauda famously beating team mate Alain Prost by just half a point to secure his third World Championship in 1984. The following year, the Austrian’s challenge derailed early on as his car was plagued by reliability issues, Lauda scoring one fourth and one fifth place in the first ten races but retiring from the other eight!
That put Prost firmly in control of the championship with only Michele Alboreto and his Ferrari as opposition. As for Lauda, he’d fallen out with team boss Ron Dennis and his negotiations with Renault to move to the French team were aborted when the talks were leaked and the Austrian decided he didn’t want to join a team that was unable to keep negotiations private.
So, on the eve of his home Grand Prix, Niki Lauda formally announced he was quitting racing at the end of the year, but the moment was spoiled by Dennis. Uninvited, the British manager went on a long speech in which Lauda was barely mentioned, Dennis focusing on the great progress McLaren had made under his leadership.
Lauda was, obviously, incensed but reacted in his unique way: focusing on getting his revenge on track, so he moved to Zandvoort with a determination he hadn’t felt since the start of the season. As usual, Prost qualified at the front, in third place, while Lauda was down in P10. As his team mate quickly moved to the front of the field, the veteran made his way through the pack and was already in second place when he came in for new tyres.
Back then you could mix and match tyre compounds, so Lauda instructed the team he would want four soft tyres if he was fighting for the win, but three softs and one hard – on the left rear wheel – if there was nothing to fight for. Being close to Prost as he pitted, Lauda expected to get the faster tyres to continue to attack but quickly felt he’d been given the safe, slower option, as Dennis wanted to make sure Prost would win and move closer to winning the championship.
Luck, however, gave Lauda a helping hand and with Prost getting a very slow tyre change, the Frenchman dropped to third behind his team mate and the young promise Ayrton Senna was back then.
It took 15 laps for Prost to get ahead of the black and gold car and by then Lauda was eight seconds down the road. On softer tyres and having more pace, it took only ten laps for Prost to catch the veteran, and another win looked on his way. Lauda, however, was not having it and defended his position harder than ever before in his long career.
Friendly as he was with Prost, what Lauda wanted was to hand to Ron Dennis payback for stalling the contract negotiations for 1986, the embarrassment caused on Lauda’s retirement announcement and, of course, by putting him on the wrong tyres for the second part of this Dutch Grand Prix.
Faster he certainly was, but Prost found himself pushed to the grass on three occasions and quickly realized his team mate was more determined than ever to win this race.
Knowing Alboreto was way behind on track and Lauda was not a title contender, the Frenchman accepted second place with his team mate getting his revenge and securing the last of his 25 Grand Prix wins.
2021 – PROPHET IN HIS OWN LAND
When the Formula 1 World Championship returned to Zandvoort in 2021, the track had been massively changed, the northern part of the circuit being sold for real estate developments and a new, twisty but still quick section being designed and used for other categories.
Max Verstappen’s rise to the top in Formula 1 reignited the Dutch’s passion for the sport, so much that a private group, that included members of the Dutch royal family, invested heavily to resurrect their national Grand Prix.
Originally planned for 2020, the return of the Dutch Grand Prix had to be delayed by one year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but that was even better for the “Orange Army” that had been following their new national hero throughout Europe the previous five years. By 2021 Red Bull had finally handed Verstappen a car capable of winning the title, so when he first raced on home soil, the battle with Lewis Hamilton was at its height.
The Mercedes driver led his rival by just three points as Formula 1 headed to the Netherlands and with passions taking to extremes had to have private security around him the whole weekend. On track, though, it was business as usual, Verstappen and Hamilton fighting for pole with only Valtteri Bottas being able to stay close to them.
The race, however, was a straight fight between the two title contenders, with Verstappen leading from pole position and Hamilton giving chase the whole way. Twice Mercedes tried the undercut, pitting the British driver for new tyres, only for Red Bull to respond one lap later and save their driver’s lead – but only just in the first time around.
Try as he might, Hamilton was never close enough to Verstappen to activate DRS but was never more than four second behind his rival, the gap fluctuating as they went through lapped cars, as the new Zandvoort doesn’t offer many places where overtaking can be done with ease.
With two laps to go and with no hope of beating the local hero, Hamilton did one last tyre change and secured the point for the fastest lap, while in a safe second place, minimizing his losses.
For the Dutch fans, this was the perfect result, as their hero left Zandvoort finally in the championship lead, now three points ahead of Hamilton, so the return of Zandvoort to the Formula 1 calendar couldn’t have had a happier outcome for Verstappen and his fans.