Motor racing: Dutch teenager van 't Hoff killed in Spa crash

Dilano van 't Hoff, a young talent from the Netherlands, was killed on Saturday in a huge crash at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium. 

The 18-year-old was participating in a junior single-seater race, part of the Formula Regional Europe Championship, that was taking place as a support event ahead of the 24 hours of Spa endurance race, which began later on Saturday afternoon. 

"Everyone associated with the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa is devastated by the news that Formula Regional EU by Alpine driver Dilano van 't Hoff lost his life in an accident during this morning's race," the race organizers said in a statement. "We express our deepest condolences to his family, friends and MP Motorsport [van 't Hoff's team]."

How did it happen? 

The crash took place during a restart to the race, in extremely heavy rain with poor visibility and with all the cars bunched tightly together. 

Video footage from spectators at the scene appeared to show van 't Hoff being involved at first in a relatively innocuous crash, on the straight following the exit of the notorious Eau Rouge and Radillon corners. 

The initial impact appeared to have caused comparatively minor damage to the car, and it wasn't quite clear how it had begun for van 't Hoff, but he had been near the front of the packed field.

His stricken car then drifted back towards the middle of the track after the initial impact, and an oncoming car nearer the back of the pack — driving at high speed and probably unsighted by the plumes of water being thrown up by the field in the heavy rain — smashed straight into the side of van 't Hoff's vehicle. 

Eau Rouge and Radillon have a lethal legacy

The series of corners leading up to Saturday's crash, known as Eau Rouge and Radillon, are a high-speed left-right-left-right kink while climbing a sharp hill at the race track in the Ardennes mountains in eastern Belgium. 

The high speed climb ends with one last left-right turn at the crest of the hill, which then leads into a long flat out straight.

That's the point where the multi-car incident that ultimately claimed van 't Hoff's life began.

French Formula 2 star Anthoine Hubert was killed in 2019 in comparable circumstances on roughly the same spot. Germany's rising Formula 1 and endurance racing star of the 1980s, Stefan Bellof, was also famously killed around that stretch of track.

It is probably considered less fearsome in modern machinery with better grip than once it was, but in poor weather in particular, some of the old risks return.

Before the CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa Francorchamps began later on Saturday, organizers and competitors gathered at the entry to the corner to pay tribute with a minute's silence. 

Condolences pour in, minute's silence at F1 race

The motorsport community was also quick to offer condolences. 

At the F1 Austrian Grand Prix weekend, a minute's silence was held before another of the support races on Saturday after news of van 't Hoff's death spread. The MP Motorsport team that the 18-year-old was racing for is also in action at both the F2 and F3 races in Austria this weekend. 

F1 drivers and teams including Dutch world champion Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, Carlos Sainz, McLaren, Ferrari and others offered their condolences online. 

Canadian driver Lance Stroll, meanwhile, appealed for changes to the Eau Rouge and Radillon corners at Spa, saying "that corner needs to be looked at and changed because we've lost two young talents in like five years." 

The F1 circus will race in Spa on the last weekend of this month. 

"They need to do something. We'll be playing with fire in a couple of weeks' time. Again. And not just us, the F2 kids, F3 kids, everyone that goes through that corner every week," Stroll said. "Even if it's dry, and someone loses their car, it's a blind corner, you hit the wall and come back into the middle of the track. A car comes at you at 300 plus kilometers an hour, you're toast."

Dutch E-Sports former world champion Jarno Opmeer, who also races in real life, shared footage of him and van 't Hoff battling for position in go-karts in their youth. 

"Rest in peace my friend. May we race each other again some day," he said.

msh/wd (AFP, AP, Reuters)