Category: Formula 1

The Quiet Kind

For a while I always stayed at the same hotel whenever I went to the Nürburgring. This hotel came with its own pub, which was frequented by hotel guests and locals alike.  An evening in the hotel pub was always a small adventure. Behind the bar would be one of the owners, Jürgen, a bold man who spoke German and very little else but believed that if you shouted loud enough you’d always get your message across, even in a foreign language. His wife Janna ran the kitchen and was only ever seen in the pub when serving out her home-cooked meals.

About four years ago, I walked into the pub on a quiet Friday night. All the tables were empty and there were only three bar stools taken; one by Jürgen, one by the local he was talking to, and one by an older man I’d never seen before. He was sitting in silence, staring at his pint of beer, presumably listening to Jürgen’s wild story of reversing a truck onto a busy crossroads in the middle of Cologne during rush hour. When Jürgen saw me, he shouted at me to get myself a bar stool. “IT’S SO EMPTY TONIGHT THAT SITTING AT A TABLE’S STUPID. GO TALK TO ARNOLD HERE.” He pointed at the older man. “HE’S HAVING ONE OF HIS QUIET DAYS.”

I dutifully sat down next to Arnold, who didn’t say much at first. It wasn’t until Janna had brought me an apple juice that we struck up a conversation about how similar in colour our separate drinks were. After that, I ventured to ask Arnold where he was from. He said he’d been born and raised in a village down the road. Then he asked me why I was staying in the hotel. When I told him I was there to visit the Nürburgring, he smiled. “I’ve been going to the Ring since I was a boy. I love that place. These days I often work there as a volunteer.” Soon after he finished his beer and left the pub. I didn’t think much of the conversation.

On Saturday night I returned to the pub and found it very crowded. I had just sat down at the last empty table with one of Janna’s home-cooked meals, when out of nowhere somebody sat down next to me. It was Arnold. “I’m glad I found you. I wanted to show you this.” He placed an old photo album on the table. “I was a marshall at the Nürburgring in the sixties and seventies. Have you ever seen the Ring in those days?” He opened the album and revealed a wonderful collections of black-and-white, slightly faded photographs.

Some pictured people, Arnold’s friends and fellow marshalls, of whom Arnold dutifully told me their life stories. Others showed a small tent next to the Nordschleife. “This was our marshall post. It gave us good shelter from the rain, but it wasn’t very stable. One day the wind was so strong it got blown into the forest and up a tree!” He burst out laughing. “We had to climb up and get it!” The album also contained photos of concrete buildings. With Arnold’s help I managed to recognise the pit building and some other Nürburgring landmarks. It seemed he had a funny story to tell about all of them. He did so with much gusto, too.

The final photograph in the album was a shot of an empty medical stretcher. When I asked Arnold what the story behind the picture was, his face turned grey. The light in his eyes faded and then disappeared altogether. “I thought I’d thrown that away,” he muttered. “That was taken in 1976. We were marshalling on the Nordschleife when we suddenly heard a lot of noise. I’ve never forgotten what I saw that day. We tried to help, but it was so difficult. Poor Niki. No one deserves to have such an accident. I’ve never marshalled again after that. Some of my friends tried to go on, but I just couldn’t do it anymore.. Nowadays I try to make myself useful for the Ring as a volunteer, even though it’s not the same.” Arnold closed the photo album and bid me goodnight again.

I saw him a few more times after that, but he was never again as talkative as that Saturday night. Some locals later told me he lived alone with two cats and didn’t go out much. They also said he’d been suffering from depression for over fourty years, which would put the starting point of his struggle somewhere in the 1970s. I’m not sure how much Lauda’s accident had to do with Arnold’s fall into sadness, but if it was the cause of it then marshalls run even greater risks than I thought they did.

Sorry, Max. I Was Wrong!

Written in honour of Max Verstappen’s first F1 victory.

I’ve known of the existence of Max Verstappen for a very long time. When I first started watching formula 1, internet was only available via dial-up modem and very expensive. So instead of allowing me access to our costly home connection, every two weeks my father would use his office network to print out the latest articles of the only formula 1-website he knew of. The first batch of papers he ever handed me was topped by a piece titled “Verstappen becomes father for the first time”. It was illustrated with a photo of Jos, his then-wife, and baby Max Emilian, born only a few hours earlier.

As the years passed, toddler Max once made the news for breaking his wrist while playing. A few years later, word started coming out of the go-kart world that a now teenaged Max was getting good results and was building a fierce rivalry with fellow Dutchman Nyck de Vries. At the time there were many questions being asked about which of the two had the most talent. For a long time the debate went in favour of De Vries, especially when he was the first to make the switch to cars. Many at the time wondered if Max, when he too switched to cars, would still be able to catch up with the by then much more experienced De Vries.

Verstappen made his move from go-karts to cars a year later, in the winter of 2013-2014. He competed in the Florida Winter Series and then tested some Formula Renault 2.0 cars. Like most, I expected Max to sign up for one of the 2.0 series – it’s a good starting point for rookies – but instead he was announced as a Formula 3-racer for Van Amersfoort Racing. When I heard, I was certain Frits van Amersfoort had lost his mind. Who puts a practically inexperienced boy in heavy machinery like that?!

My opinion about VAR’s Verstappen project didn’t improve much upon seeing it live for the first time. When I stumbled into the Formula 3-paddock at the Hockenheimring in May 2014, it didn’t prove difficult to spot the VAR tent. In fact, it was almost impossible to miss it. It was the only tent with fifteen spectators in front of it, all dressed in orange, with Jos Verstappen-caps and Dutch flags. Grumbling I walked past the canopy. I refused to be in awe of a driver simply because of his last name. As far as I was concerned, Max would have to prove himself first.

During the first free practice, he failed to do that. I was watching from the inside of the Motodrome, from where I had a good view of how strangely Max was handling the Sachskurve. He literally took a new line every lap. So, I quickly pegged him down as a nutter. This was an opinion I stuck with even after Max had finally found his preferred line and, over the course of the weekend, began bringing his lap times down drastically. The races on Saturday and Sunday only made things worse. In the first race Max retired, in the second he broke down on his way to the grid and very clumsily parked his car at the Spitskehre, and in the third one… okay, fine, he won that one. But hey, that was probably just dumb luck. After that first weekend in Hockenheim, I saw absolutely no reason to hype up ‘this Verstappen boy’. On the way home, I even remember stating: “The kid still has an awful lot to learn and I doubt he’ll ever be as good as his father was. If he wants to prove me wrong, he’s going to have to step up his game BIG TIME.”

Well, he did.