The best of Zandvoort

It became part of the F1 world championship in 1952 and hosted no fewer than 30 Dutch Grands Prix before a lack of funds required to update its ageing, faded infrastructure called time on it and, we thought, did so forever.

More than anything, more than almost anywhere, this was a driver’s circuit. For while it was really, really fast – pole in 1985 was taken at an average of almost 134mph despite two hairpins – its character could not be less like somewhere like Monza whose long straights require power above all. To go fast at Zandvoort you needed balls and you needed brains. Look at it like this: of those 30 races, all bar six were won by people who either were, or would go on to be champion; at Monza over the same period that number is 12.

Zandvoort only became a regular on the Grand Prix scene in 1958 but the following year hosted its first truly noteworthy race, Jo Bonnier emerging on top of a fine battle with Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham and Masten Gregory to win BRM’s first world championship Grand Prix and the only one he would claim in a career that continued until his sad death at Le Mans in 1972.

In 1962 it saw the debut on the world stage of the game-changing Lotus 25 and the rather less effective Porsche 804 which was nevertheless and remains to this day Stuttgart’s one and only purpose-built Formula 1 car. The race was won by Graham Hill, his very first at the top level. Five years later another handy new Lotus fired up in the pits sounding rather different to anything else out there. This was because it was the Lotus 49 and this was not only its race debut, but also that of the Cosworth DFV engine bolted directly to its chassis behind its driver, Jim Clark, who duly went and won the race (see lead image).

Probably the most exciting race ever held at Zandvoort came in 1971 when the heavens opened, allowing the two greatest wet weather drivers of their – and some say any – era to make the rest of the field look like makeweights. They were Ferrari’s Jacky Ickx and BRM’s Pedro Rodriguez who simply drove out of sight of the rest of the field despite the intensity of their battle unquestionably slowing them down. Ickx led, but as the weather worsened, the incomparable Pedro closed and then squeezed past. He held the lead for 20 laps and would surely have won had the track not started to dry. Only then did the power of the Ferrari’s brand new flat-12 engine start to tell, providing Ickx with a win on what was almost home soil.

Four years later in 1975 came perhaps Zandvoort’s most improbable win, when a car made on a shoestring by a team run by an English lord with a scruffy public school boy as his driver embarrassed the most blue blooded team of all. I refer of course to James Hunt’s maiden win driving for the tiny Hesketh team in the simple, clean and effective Harvey Postlethwaite designed 308. Hunt stood on the top step of the podium grinning away, flanked either side by works Ferrari drivers Clay Regazzoni and Niki Lauda who must barely have been able to believe what they were seeing.

But probably the most remembered Zandvoort moment came at the end of that decade. To those of a certain age – I was 13 – the image of Gilles Villeneuve slithering around the track on three and often two wheels in a ruined Ferrari 312T4 remains seared on the memory to this day. He’d battled past Alan Jones’ Williams to take the lead, held it for 36 laps then was robbed by a nearside rear puncture and flung off the circuit for good measure. And he simply wasn’t going to take it.

Regardless of the fact he only had three tyres left, he reversed back onto the track, covering it in mud and set off back to the pits at as close to race pace as the most talented driver in the world at that time could manage. Of course the car was a wreck by the time he got it back, but that hardly mattered. This was mind over matter, the indomitability of the human spirit saying ‘please don’t blind me with the facts, I’ve got a race to run.’

The end came in 1985 though, at the time, no one knew it. But it still managed to go out in style, as Niki Lauda who’d had a miserable season to date and already announced his retirement, blew through from 10th on the grid to overtake teammate Alain Prost and win by one fifth of a second, which is how much time it takes you to blink. It was Lauda’s last win in Formula 1 and it is said he drove like that only to prove a point to a friend who’d told him he’d gone off the boil and was merely rent collecting on his way to retirement.

We cannot, of course, omit to mention that like most circuits back then, Zandvoort had its fair share of dark days too. People remember the death of Roger Williamson there in 1973 because it’s all still there on YouTube, including David Purley’s attempt to save his life, wading into the flames as pitifully equipped marshals stood aside, an act of genuine heroism that rightly earned him the George Medal. Too few, I feel, remember that it was also here three years earlier that Piers Courage lost his life in another fire, or that at the time he was one of Britain’s brightest prospects in the sport.

But enough of the sadness. Zandvoort today may not be quite the Zandvoort that was, but you only have to look at Max Verstappen’s on board lap from a couple of years ago to know it’s still a cracking circuit and, most importantly, one where the driver really does make the difference. Roll on Sunday.