For the Algemeen Dagblad and De Telegraaf respectively, reporters Hans Botman (70) and Coo Dijkman (78) spent decades covering Formula 1 circuits around the world. However, they always remained at home in the dunes of Zandvoort. A double interview: about memories of the circuit, their F1 adventures, and more.
Hans Botman arrives fresh and energetic at CM.Com Circuit Zandvoort, as the national racing mecca is now fully called. The fact that he is the first of the two illustrious reporters to arrive is no surprise. “I live nearby, you know. That helps.” Botman is a proud resident of Zandvoort. Jokingly, he adds: “With Coo, it always takes a bit longer.”
Once Dijkman arrives by car, he can handle it. The duo get along well, there is mutual respect as individuals and as (former) colleagues from the journalistic profession. It soon becomes clear that they both still have a great and shared passion for motor sports.
“Do you still watch every race, Hans?” Dijkman asks his former professional brother. Botman: “Absolutely, comfortably at home in front of the TV. And you?” A firm nod serves as an answer. “And,” Dijkman adds, “my wife too. She’s even a bigger fan than I am.”
Old love never fades, as an old Dutch wisdom goes. And anyone who hears Botman and Dijkman talking about motor sports and their former profession immediately after their warm greeting sees the proof. The sun may have made its appearance at the Zandvoort circuit, but the sparkle in both their eyes definitely comes from something else.
There’s no better place to delve into their racing past than here, at the circuit that is so close to their hearts. The DGP Lounge, made available by the circuit management especially for this occasion, provides the perfect setting for a conversation about Zandvoort, their work, the rise of Jos Verstappen, special encounters, and much more.
Verslaggeving
Botman followed Formula 1 for almost three decades for the Algemeen Dagblad, Dijkman even nearly forty years for De Telegraaf. Both said goodbye to the regular reporting of the premier class around 2009. Do they not miss the often hectic work? “No way,” Botman says, shaking his head. “All that hustle and bustle nowadays. I don’t want to think about it. The traveling, the work, it was a hectic life. Beautiful, though. But we’re a few years older now, aren’t we?”
Dijkman adds: “In the past, you would come back from a race, from a busy weekend, and then you would immediately pack your suitcase for the next trip. That traveling, that flying, it’s all become much busier. It starts at Schiphol.”
He can talk about current sports reporting, as Dijkman is still active in that field. “But in motor sports, as a freelancer for De Telegraaf. Recently, I was at the TT in Assen for four days. And I’ll tell you honestly: I was exhausted afterwards. You really need to recover these days.””For the record, the duo is not complaining. Instead, they are relishing their memories of good times, of adventures they experienced in and thanks to Formula 1. They do not subscribe to the adage ‘everything was better in the past’. “Not at all,” confirms Dijkman. “It wasn’t better. But it was different. Take this circuit, for example. A lot has changed in Zandvoort, just look at the pit complex.”
Zandvoort Circuit
The conversation naturally leads to Zandvoort. According to Dijkman, it’s always a thrill to drive onto the grounds again, though he admits he doesn’t visit often. “But it was and still is a legendary circuit. Challenging and incredibly fast, even back in the day. With the peculiar Hugenholtz corner, the Tarzan corner, the Scheivlak where you needed a lot of courage, and so on.”
Many people didn’t expect the Dutch Grand Prix to return after 1985. Botman and Dijkman praise the circuit owners and the organization, although they acknowledge that the rise of Max Verstappen has been invaluable. “They’ve done a great job here,” Botman believes. “Don’t forget they also had to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences,” Dijkman adds.
Both veterans are content with the modifications to the circuit. “The banked turns are very beautiful, very special,” one says. “And incredibly steep,” adds the other. They notice other unique features. Botman: “Just consider the setting: dunes, sea, beach, sun. Unique. Although there were times when the circuit almost disappeared, at least if certain people had their way. Politics, environmental movements, lawsuits – they’ve sometimes caused difficult times for the circuit.”
The Zandvoort resident continues: “The circuit and motorsport are part of the village. And I think 99 percent of the people are in favor of the circuit. I don’t come here often myself, haven’t been here for years. Not that I’ve had enough of it, not at all. But there are other fun things to do in this village.”
As a young boy, Botman was already frequenting the circuit. “We moved to Zandvoort in 1964, my parents bought a cigar shop at the time. They started selling tickets from 1965 onwards, and we would get a free ticket ourselves. So, I could often go to the circuit, I was about 11 or 12 years old then.”
Dijkman interjects: “An early fan, then.”
Botman, with a laugh: “Well, at that age, I was more concerned with collecting empty bottles at the circuit for money than with the sport itself.”
He has been a regular follower for the AD since the late seventies, his colleague Dijkman had already been a journalist in the dunes earlier. As a young reporter, he was there in 1973 when Roger Williamson crashed in Zandvoort. In only his second Formula 1 Grand Prix, the Brit crashed, the car caught fire, and no one could save him. Williamson perished in the inferno. Roger Williamson’s tragic accident
“I will never forget how colleague Rob Wiedenhoff tapped me on the shoulder at the circuit. I looked back and saw those big black smoke plumes in the distance. Then you already know something terrible has happened.” Dijkman sighs. “What a drama that was.”
It happened at a time when the safety of Zandvoort as a circuit had been discussed more than once. That happened later much more often. It reminds Dijkman of Jackie Stewart. “He always had a lot of criticism about safety. Although he was right, I thought he was a stubborn man. He would also show Jos Verstappen how to drive a car, how to take corners. As if Jos didn’t know that himself, come on.”
Jos Verstappen
The conversation naturally turns to the Dutchman who provided the sport with a huge popularity boost in our country in the nineties and early ‘zero’s’: Jos Verstappen. The man who at one point had the largest fan club of all active drivers. Botman and Dijkman followed the Dutchman closely as newspaper reporters from the start to the end of his career.
“You saw the interest in the sport increase,” says the former. “That’s when we as a newspaper also started going to a Grand Prix more often. Jos was very popular in Limburg, and later in the rest of the country. A great talent, but he also often went off the track. The negative reactions were then not lacking.”
The relationship with Jos and father Frans (who passed away in 2019) was sometimes difficult for Dijkman. Mutual respect was certainly there, as evidenced by the presence of Jos Verstappen at the farewell party of the Telegraaf journalist in 2009. “But Frans and Jos could one moment be at each other’s throats, the next moment embracing. For example, I once had an interview in…”
Botman: “In Echt?”
Dijkman: “No, Montfort. At Café de Rotonde, owned by Frans. I arrived there, but guess what? No Jos. They had had a fight again. That interview later appeared in the newspaper, I wrote about it then. They were not happy about that. Sometimes the relationships were difficult, criticism was not always appreciated.”
In the end, everything worked out. Verstappen understood that he needed the media, and vice versa. Botman said, “He wasn’t an easy talker, but he was a good driver. He was really the ‘coming man’ then. They brought him to Benetton in 1994 too quickly (Verstappen took the place of the severely injured JJ Lehto).”
Dijkman added, “He also had bad luck, like with the eventually cancelled F1 project from Honda around 1999. Jos was the test driver and the future looked very promising. But then Harvey Postlethwaite (technical director) suddenly died and the whole project was eventually cancelled. A shame.” His colleague nodded. “There could have been so much more for him. Jos was definitely a fast driver. But at Benetton he also had bad luck, everything revolved around Michael Schumacher there.”
The year 1994 is inevitably linked to Verstappen: he made world news that year during the German Grand Prix. At the Hockenheim circuit, the Dutchman had a disastrous weekend. Botman said, “He first went off the track, also drove in Schumacher’s car and that went wrong. I saw him crying in the garage on Saturday. It was really against him that weekend.”
Dijkman added, “Because the next day his car caught fire.”
The pit fire caused a big shock. Dijkman was not there live, Botman was. Fortunately for Verstappen, he came out relatively unscathed. “And a few weeks later he suddenly came third in Hungary, he was on the podium because Martin Brundle dropped out at the end,” Botman recalls the other extreme that year. “The end of the race was bizarre, because it took a while for everyone to understand what was going on. Schumacher was also surprised, like: ‘What are you doing here?'”
Botman, jokingly to Dijkman, “You weren’t there, were you? Not at that pit fire and not at that podium. You missed all those sensational moments, Coo.” Dijkman appreciated the teasing. “Fortunately, we have experienced many other special moments.”
Approachable
They regularly spoke one-on-one with drivers, something that is more the exception than the rule in today’s F1 world. In the time of Botman and Dijkman, drivers were easier to talk to, they were approachable. More than today at least. It was a different time, with fewer interests, no social media and so on.
Dijkman gives an example from the past. “I can still remember a Grand Prix of Italy. Mario Andretti, who had already driven Formula 1, had come back from America to participate. I knocked on the door of his caravan to be able to speak to him. And he said: ‘Fine, come on in’. That was all just possible.”
Botman had similar experiences and refers to an interview with Nelson Piquet. “It was at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Piquet drove for Lotus, it wasn’t going so well. A colleague of mine and I wanted to interview him. That was allowed for fifteen, twenty minutes. But at one point we were already there for an hour, just chatting. My colleague said: ‘Come on, we have to go.’ To which Piquet said that we should just stay, because he still had all the time. Something like that is unthinkable now.”
Cherished Memories and Camaraderie
Times have indeed changed, especially in terms of technology and communication. This brings Dijkman to a delightful anecdote from 1990. “After the Monaco Grand Prix, Hans and I were having dinner with Pim Stoel (who passed away in 2009). We were wondering, ‘How did Arie Luyendijk perform in the Indy 500?’ To find out, we had to make a phone call.”
Stoel went in search of a phone booth, after which Dijkman turned to Botman. “I told Hans, ‘Watch this: he’s going to say that Arie won’. And sure enough. So I said, ‘Don’t pull my leg, Pim. I’ll call myself’. And then I found out he was right, haha. Well, there was no internet back then, of course. Nowadays, you just look it up, but we had a good laugh.”
The camaraderie was always strong. “We were often a small group, about four people. It was always enjoyable, with food and drinks. That’s important, because you have to combine pleasure with business,” says Dijkman. “And competition? Yes, there was some between newspapers, but I didn’t necessarily see Hans as a competitor.” Botman adds, “I often chose a different approach. And we had fun together, the atmosphere was always relaxed.”
Max Verstappen
The fact that the Netherlands now boasts a multiple world champion in Max Verstappen is remarkable for a small racing nation. Botman and Dijkman agree. They claim to enjoy the performances of the driver they got to know early on as the son of Jos Verstappen. But wouldn’t they secretly have liked to write about a world title themselves?
No, they almost unanimously respond. Botman, with a smile, says, “I have a special story about Max. My last major report in Zandvoort was a Formula 3 race that he won, just before Verstappen was about to move to Formula 1. So, in my mind, I got to write about the beginning of what is already a magnificent career.”
Dijkman, who once wrote a major story about a young Max Verstappen in Macau, also has a unique personal story that even an article about a world championship could never match. “It was the 1978 German Grand Prix,” he recalls. “I was supposed to go, but my wife was about to give birth. I thought: I’ll go there early in the morning and be back in time for the birth. What happened was: my daughter was born at two minutes past four. And that was exactly the moment when Mario Andretti crossed the finish line as the winner in his Lotus.”
