ZANDVOORT RISING
OLD-SCHOOL. That’s the compound adjective that crops up time and again when racing people describe Zandvoort, no longer the former home of the Dutch Grand Prix but, from 3 May and against all the odds, once again a contemporary Formula 1 venue – for the first time in 35 years.
The comparison to the other calendar addition for 2020, a new hybrid street circuit in Hanoi (see sidebar), could not be more stark. Vietnam? Really? Why on earth…? But Zandvoort: orange-hued Max Verstappen mania, a rich motorsport heritage stretching back to 1939, slap-bang in Formula 1’s European heartland. Yes, that makes more sense. It is, as they say, old-school.
Except, from the air-brushed perfection by which modern F1 tends to live by, Zandvoort is surely not only old-school but sorely outdated. Like Brands Hatch, which hosted its last grand prix a year after the Dutch track’s 1985 sign-off, the circuit in the sand dunes on Holland’s North Sea coast has been viewed as a relic of the past, at least as far as F1 is concerned. Too cramped, too rough around the edges, too dangerous – until the ‘Max factor’ apparently convinced F1 to turn back time. Zandvoort is now set for the most hotly anticipated return since Doc Brown and Marty McFly started messing around with DeLoreans.
“It’s something that no one could ever have imagined,” says Mark Koense, Dutch journalist, broadcaster, and author of the definitive historical tome ‘Grand Prix Zandvoort’. “Since 1985, we thought it would take a miracle to have the grand prix back. And that miracle happened,
