Greatest Dutch Grand Prix moments
Formula 1’s return to Zandvoort may have been delayed, but we take a look back at the circuit’s greatest races in the meantime
The Dutch Grand Prix was supposed to return this weekend. The Formula 1 circus was going to visit Zandvoort for the first time since 1985, but the coronavirus pandemic has meant that Max Verstappen will have to wait a bit longer to perform for Red Bull in front of his home fans.
The seaside venue has a history stretching right back to the beginning of F1 and has hosted some great races, titanic struggles and fine moments. It has had its tragedies too, most notably the deaths of Piers Courage and Roger Williamson in the 1970 and 1973 Dutch GPS respectively. But with such a chequered past, Zandvoort and its greatest moments were well worth putting under the microscope, even if no one can be there this weekend.
EARLY STANDOUTS
Work on Zandvoort began during World War Two, and the British Racing Drivers’club organised the first meeting on 7 August 1948. Prince Bira’s Maserati won the Zandvoort GP by just 0.1 seconds from the Alfa Romeo of Tony Rolt, and the following year’s event attracted a strong field that included factory Ferraris.
Perhaps the finest contest before Zandvoort joined the world championship calendar came in 1950, with the big race now named the Dutch GP. The pacesetting Alfa Romeos were not entered, but an Italian victory still looked likely, with Juan Manuel Fangio and Froilan Gonzalez both present in Maseratis.
French ace Raymond Sommer nevertheless took pole in his Talbot-lago and repassed Fangio, who was struggling with suspension issues, in the early stages. Sommer’s clutch eventually failed him, but still there was a surprise as Louis Rosier – victor of the Le Mans 24 Hours a month before – came through to win the 90-lap contest, beating the Ferraris of Luigi Villoresi and Alberto Ascari by over a minute in his Talbot-lago.
BRM’S BREAKTHROUGH
The Dutch GP became part of the world championship in 1952, and for the next few years –aside from 1954, 1956 and 1957 when the race was not held – domination was the name of the game. Ascari led every lap in 1952 and 1953 for Ferrari; the Fangio-stirling Moss Mercedes‘train’left the rest behind in 1955; and Moss thrashed the opposition for Vanwall in 1958.
The 1959 Dutch GP, however, was different. For nearly a decade BRM had been something of a disaster. Initially all the hopes of the British (motorsport) industry had rested with British Racing Motors, but the failure of the overly complicated V16 and fragility of the promising P25 had long since resulted in the endeavour being labelled a shambles. The team persevered under Alfred Owen, and the Tony Rudd-designed car, which had first appeared in 1955, finally came good in 1959.
A great deal of testing preceded Jo Bonnier’s Zandvoort pole position, and the Swede battled the Coopers of first Masten Gregory and then Jack Brabham, gaining the advantage when each developed gearbox issues. Bonnier’s fine effort looked like it would go unrewarded when Moss took the lead on lap 60 of 75, but the Rob Walker-run Cooper then succumbed to gearbox failure, leaving Bonnier to take his only world championship F1 victory. It was also the first of BRM’S 17 wins; three years later it would win the drivers’and constructors’titles.
TWO NEW ERAS BEGIN
Jim Clark and Lotus had a certain affinity with Zandvoort. The revolutionary monocoque Lotus 25 had made its debut in the 1962 Dutch GP, and Clark scored a hat-trick from 1963 to 1965. He also put in one of his greatest drives, with two-litre Climax power against the three-litre Brabham Repcos, in 1966, but it’s the following year’s race that has the most significance. The debut of the Ford Cosworth DFV probably stands as Zandvoort’s most important moment.
Colin Chapman’s Lotus 49, designed to use the DFV as a stressed member, had exclusive use of the powerplant in 1967, and Graham Hill took pole by half a second on the car’s debut. He led before retiring with a broken camshaft drive, but team-mate Clark – who had suffered a troubled practice and started eighth – had already climbed to fourth
and now inherited third place. He continued his charge and, on lap 16 of 90, overtook Brabham for the lead. Clark then nursed the new car to a 23.6s victory, the first of 155 world championship GP wins for the DFV and its derivatives.
The following year’s Dutch GP could also be regarded as the start of a new era. Benchmark driver Clark had been killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim less than three months before round five of the championship, leaving a vacuum at the top of the sport.
Jackie Stewart, who had missed two of the three intervening GPS due to injury, indicated that he would be the man to take over at the top with a superb victory at a wet Zandvoort. The Scot qualified down in fifth in his Dfv-powered Matra, but took the lead on lap four. On a day when the Dunlop runners had an advantage, Stewart quickly pulled away. Only Jean-pierre Beltoise (V12 Matra) could get anywhere near his times but, almost as soon as he got into second, he went off, pitted to have his throttle slides checked, and had to do it all again. He did, but still finished a minute and a half behind a cruising Stewart.
DUEL OF THE RAINMASTERS
Aside from Stewart, the other two rainmasters of the time were
Jacky Ickx and Pedro Rodriguez. And they provided the rare sight of a race-long wet-weather battle in the 1971 GP.
Firestone-shod cars dominated this time, and Ickx’s Ferrari and the BRM of Rodriguez proved to be the class of the field. The duo proved incredibly close in dry qualifying, Ickx taking pole by just
0.04 seconds, and the Ferrari maintained its lead at the start as they quickly pulled clear. After two laps, third man Stewart – struggling with inferior Goodyear rubber and braking issues on his Tyrrell – was nearly nine seconds behind Rodriguez.
On lap nine, the leaders came upon an incident involving Francois Cevert and Nanni Galli at Tarzan, and Rodriguez took the opportunity to snatch the lead. The BRM pulled away over the next few laps, at one stage building an advantage of over eight seconds, but then
Ickx started to close the gap, the Ferrari pulling better out of the slower corners as the circuit dried.
Ickx grabbed the lead back on lap 30 of 70, Rodriguez retaliated in traffic the next time around, and then the Ferrari moved ahead once more on lap 32.“It was all real Formula 1 racing, and the damp crowd loved it,”reported Autosport’s Patrick Mcnally.
Ickx started to pull away, though he tended to be more cautious in traffic than his pursuer, Rodriguez keeping up the pressure. With 11 laps to go, Ickx was 15.6s ahead but – with oil down – the Ferrari driver was more cautious in the closing stages than Rodriguez, who was only eight seconds behind at the flag. Everyone else was lapped.
HUNT’S BREAKTHROUGH
Niki Lauda and Ferrari were on fine form when F1 arrived for the
1975 Dutch GP, having won the previous three rounds. That trend seemed set to continue when Lauda took pole, with team-mate Clay Regazzoni alongside, but more North Sea rain on race day provided an opportunity for others to shine.
James Hunt’s Hesketh had managed to lead the incredibly tight Dfv-powered brigade in practice, and he ran fourth in the early stages as Lauda led. Hunt had previously noticed that slick tyres worked better on a drying track than most thought, and he was one of the first to get rid of his grooved rubber.
“Lauda and most of the field stopped a good bit later than me,” said Hunt years later, when selecting the drive as the race of his life. “Once ahead, I gave it everything. By the time Jean-pierre Jarier and Lauda got their tyres hot and got used to the track conditions, I had a 10-second lead. From then on they were slowly catching me because the Hesketh was not a fully competitive car.”once Lauda had finally got clear of Jarier’s Shadow he closed on Hunt and, for the final third of the race, applied pressure to the leader. But Hunt, on a dry set-up compared to Lauda’s compromised 312T, held firm to win by a second.
Hunt felt it was a key drive that ended his weakness of making mistakes while leading:“that was the completion of my training as an F1 driver. It enabled me to win the 1976 championship, at my first and only chance in a competitive car, under maximum pressure.”
the front locking in T1 and T10. To overcome that, drivers may have to shift the brake balance to the rear while approaching those corners. An exotic solution could be to run asymmetric camber angles (less camber on the right side) to have more tyre patch available in braking, but also in acceleration in at least three slow-speed corners.
Then the banking. This unique feature of this track calls for lower camber angles to reduce the responsiveness of the car and for the tyre wear. It will be fascinating to see the driving lines in T2 and T3.
The former is a blind and uphill corner followed by a downhill and T3, which offers the highest banking level of the season. An amazing 3D forces input into the drivers’ bodies, which will stress-test their consistency capabilities.
The banking will also call for slightly higher cars overall. Furthermore, because of the bankings (especially the last corner), for a given construction, the tyre supplier may be worried about the structural reliability of the tyre. This would push Pirelli to suggest higher tyre pressures than usual with a consequent relative loss of longitudinal grip.
To add some more important details, we expect a qualifying lap around one minute and three seconds. The top speed in qualify will be around 334km/h, of which 23km/h is because of the hybrid system. This looks to be a low WOT (wide open throttle percentage) track, so should be gentle on the engines. The biggest braking areas are T1 and T10, meaning also the brakes will have an easier life but not the kinetic recovery of the hybrid system (estimated 710 kj/ lap). If gusty, T8 and T9 may present some annoying short-shifting for the drivers to manage. The lap simulation (left), which was possible thanks to the track data kindly provided by Dromo (Zandvoort track designer), suggests the speed profile (above).
Regrettably, we won’t see much overtaking. The track is narrow and straights are not so long. The chance for overtaking will be there if the driver in front makes mistakes out of T3, T9 and T11. Nevertheless, the windy and sandy nature of the area, plus the uncertainties related to the Dutch weather, may naturally introduce the level of unpredictability that always helps provide the entertainment.