I'm looking for stories and info on Rob Slotemaker. I know he ran the anti-skid school, was instrumental in Jan Lammer's career and was a really good touring car driver, especially in the rain. But, did he race primarly in tin-tops or did he have stints in Formula and Prototypes as well?

Thanks.

Well, to tell a short story about Rob Slotemaker isnt that easy. His life was full of great adventures, so stories and annecdotes abundant.

In short:
Born in 1929 in Indonesia

Joined the dutch Air Force and followed many trainings in the US
(he flew a plan even befor he knew how to drive a car!). During the winter time as the air base was closed due to snow and ice, he often took his car to spin it and learned in the process that he could also correct the car. A practice he learned to master.

Made racing debut in the Rally Montecarlo 1954 with friend Erik de Stoppelaar (they finished!)

1955: started his infamous skid school at the Zandvoort race track (today it is still there in modern facilities and in full swing).

1964-1965 F3: was the first driver for the DAF F3 project, he drove the Alexis and Brabham. Did a great amount of testing.

Participated in many rallies, also in the London-Sydney Marathon with Daf.

Le Mans 1961 with Les Leston in Triumph TR4/S (11th)
Le Mans 1962 reserve wit Ted Lund and the TVR Grantura of TVR Cars
Le Mans 1964 with David Hobbs in Triumph Spitfire (21st)
Le Mans 1965 with David Hobbs in Triumph Spitfire (DNF)
Le Mans 1968 with Teddy Pilette in Alfa Romeo T33/2 Team VDS (DNF)
Le Mans 1969 with Teddy Pilette in Alfa Romeo T33/2 Team VDS (DNF)
Le Mans 1970 co- drove the Solar Porsche 908 camera car (in practise only)

1968-1969 many endurance races with Teddy Pilette in the Alfa Romeo T33's of Team VDS

1970: advisor and one of the drivers for the film 'Le Mans' (he was capable to make a sports car spin at high speed and end up in the same (driving) direction. He made a nice pirouette with the yellow Chevron and you can see him climb out of the car in the film.

September 16th 1979 fatal crash in his Camaro at the Zandvoort track.

Basically you should not ask what he drove, ask what he hasn't driven. He didn't do F1, still there was a mystery entry by Ecurie Maarsbergen for him for the Dutch GP.

Lammers is his most famous pupil. Another one was Wim Loos, who was seen at Zandvoort by Franco Lini. Lini was so impressed that he mentioned him to Enzo Ferrari who was looking for talent. Loos lost his life at Spa during the 24 hours, after he had received an invitation to test at Ferrari with another young talent, a certain Jacky Ickx...

Have a look at this clip where Rob Slotemaker skids along Zandvoort in winter time with famous dutch journo Henk Terlingen (Apollo Henky for he also commented the Apollo moon landings on dutch TV, next to racing). Many students did only see the track through the side window when the master was driving!!
http://www.wheelztv.nl/cms_show_art-Fun.php?id=131

As the above indicates, Slotemaker was a works driver for Triumph in rallying and racing during the sixties

Googling around I found this nice collection of pics: http://rsm.fotoboek.garnierprojects.com/fo...r.asp?folder=11

Am I right in remembering him as a regular in a DAF 33 Rallycross car at the televised meetings at Lydden Hill in the late sixties/early 70s, did he also have a brother who also drove ?

No, those are Jan and Harrie de Rooy you're thinking about.
Apart from many touring car races, he raced sports 2000 in his last season as well. Also he did a few one-make races.

Ah, yes of course.

I was at Zandvoort the day he was killed. It was all rather strange.

He was racing in a Swedish Camaro Series race when he spun on oil and collided with a course car which was attending a previous accident.

I remember it well for three reasons; firstly that the Swedish Camaros spent the entire "race" spewing oil all over the circuit and I mean a really quite incredible amount.

Secondly, that the following EFDA FF1600 race was cancelled, despite the fact that it was the main event of the weekend with a large, competitive British and Irish contingent present - most of whom were really anxious about the Camaro race, having witnessed their practice session and it's resultant effect on the track conditions.

And, thirdly, the outpouring of grief I witnessed in the pits and paddock by some of the drivers in the race, from drivers in other races and from many of the Dutch officials. It was frankly overwhelming.

I doubt we'll ever know if the FF race was cancelled because of the state of the track, or the state of the race officials...

I was there too that day. Don't even remember the cancellation of the FF race!
Bitter was that Rob raced his normal Group 1 Camaro against the Swedish cars, which had big spoilers everywhere. Rob had no chance of winning, but just enjoyed himself - up to that faithful collision.

I think the first eight on the grid were covered by just half a second - a tremendous race was in prospect. Pity the organisers screwed it up completely - they should have re-scheduled the programme after practice...

Thanks, I knew you guys would have the info and stories I was looking for.

Team VDS, is that the same Team VDS that ran Geoff Brabham in Can-Am in the 80's and was a fixture in Cart during that time as well?

Silverstone 1966, Tim Parnell asked Slotemaker and Wim Loos to test a Lotus-BRM. After he flipped a coin. Slotemaker was the first to go on track. After a couple of laps the front suspension broke. Loos didn't test that day the car. Does anybody have more information about this test?

Did Slotemaker test more Formula 1 cars?

Yes it is.

other info :

Slotemaker won the Dutch national tourism championship in 1967 and 68 with an Alfa Romeo GTA

I verified an hypothetic entry inh any F1 Non -championship race.Rob Slotemaker entered none .

As far as I know, Slotemaker did not win the 1967 title. However, in 1974 and 1975 he won Group 1 titles.

so that s a mistake in the encyclopedia of Motorsport book by GN Georgano, the info is excerpt from.

Yep, the disqualification of Slotemaker in the last race must have escaped Mr Georgano
Did I pay 245 Guilders for that?!

Some annecdotes on Slotemaker ('Lucky' or 'The blond jet pilot')

When he flew for the Ducth Air Force he made a fly by for a girl friend who lived in The Hague. He flew over the city with his jet fighter at about 30-60 feet from the roof tops (!). The girl friend was impressed. Another woman (pregnant) had spontaneously started to give birth to her child. Slotemaker wasnt caught as some other jets had been around and no-one had identified his plane. It did however lead to some questions in the dutch House of Common.

The F1 test with BRM came from a race at Zandvoort. Slotemaker and his protege Wim Loos drove their Alfa GTA's in a race during the Grand Prix weekend. They impressed many on the wet track, slippen and slidding in formation. Some at BRM imagined it would be an idea to invite these gentlemen for the test.
It was decided by a toss of a coin that Rob would start the test (Piers Courage was present as well!). In the front suspension a previously broken part broke again after only a few laps. Slotemaker spun out of control and smashed into a wall. Unconcious. He hurt his knees, shoulders, jaw, ribs, etc. He ended up in the hospital.
Slotemaker had a miserable stay there and his manager Van Wamelen came back to the UK to pick him up. He was supposed to be his 'brother' as he could only be released from hospital if a family member asked for it. On a luggage cart Slotemaker was wheeled into the plane back to Holland.
This mishap was secretly kept away at the time, as it was seen as a bad promotion for his skid school. In Holland everyone believed 'Sloot' was in a UK-hospital for an acute inflammation of his appendicitis.

A promotional add for his skid school once was: "In de slip, uit de slip", meaning so much as "You are in a skid, and like that you are out of it". However, "slip" means in dutch panties and seems to be something you say to your girl friend at a certain stage...

He also drove F2 in a Protos for Ron Harris. He was indeed works driver for Triumph, but also for DAF. He drove the Porsche 904 for Racing Team Holland.

His hands looked rather swollen as he had tried to put out a fire at his skid school in 1973 and was seen running out of it as a ball of fire.

He was never able to say if he was a rally driver or a race driver.

The 1979 accident was by some onlookers described as that Slotemaker drove simply to fast and had been warned by yellow, white and the red/yellow flags. It was sad, as it was his jubilee year, he was quite set on his retirement as a racer and some much to give to dutch racing.

He was posthumously beaten in the dutch touring car championship +2.5 litre in 1979.

He was very proud on what Lammers had achieved until then, and he was confident he would have gone very far (sometimes he even would say: "Jantje will become world champ!"). His death certainly was a blow to Jan's career and it is my strong believe Rob could have helped him in a better team in the years to come. Jan did become WC in the FIA Sportscars championship 2002 and 2003. Slotemakers words came back to me on those days.

There is a summary on this new website but, alas, in French:
http://vds-racing.com/index.htm

In this moment I have no time to have a check, but as far as I remember, according to "Il dizionario dei piloti" by Tommaso Tommasi (that is to say a driver's data base published in Italy during 1976) Rob Slotemaker tested Filipinetti's Eagle and crashed it with haevy damage. Formerly the swiss Eagle was sheduled to race in a selected number of races with Herbert Muller in F.1 World Championship, but, after the crash, was not possible to go ahead with the program. Anyway in the book dedicated to Scuderia Filipinetti there is a note about the Eagle in which is stated that the car was underpowered and absolutely not competitive for proper Gp racing.

A picture of Rob Slotemaker in a Beattie Formula Ford during the Johnson Euro Trophy race Zandvoort, march 30 1970.



Regards,

Henk A. Hazelaar

Team Slotemaker Alfa Romeo's at Zandvoort.
Rob Slotemaker behind Wim Loos.



Regards,

Henk A. Hazelaar

If only Spa had not happened. If only...

There is a big share of Rob in his Triumph during the Tour de France 1964 on a VHS video sold in UK.

I knew Rob from almost the first day he started racing; the racing he did was mentioned in previous posts and is quite complete.

He initiated and ran the Rensportschool Zandvoort with Henk van Zalinge delivering dozens of future racing drivers.

He was a great driver, had fantastic car-control but was also totally uncontrollable with anything he did.
Nobody disregarded rules as much as he did, and he loved it!
And, most of the time he got away with it.
Rob was a player, fun-guy, practical joker etc. all his life, playing with cars, planes, boats, everything.

His death at the end of his career was a tragedy and a great loss to Motorsports.

I could also have posted this in a Lammers thread. However, I found this video by chance on YouTube.
A small interview with Jan (in dutch) on Slotemaker and the way Lammers got a chance at his skid school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3FqDMkavRw&feature=dir

Nice footage of the young driver in action.

He explains the day when he asked Slotemaker if he could help wet the track for the skid school and kept coming back. He was 'used' by Slotemaker to show grown ups how easy it was to skid and control a car. "Even a 9 year old can do it". At the same time Jan would fly by and skid the car with great ease. In fact Lammers looked (still does) younger than his real age. Most scared people then often thought: "If the kid can, ...".

Also the way Lammers handled the untimely death of his maestro: "The mourning is often the reflection of how the person lived. And Slotemaker was not a man to complain".

The reason that the following race was cancelled could well have had somethng to do with the fact that the Chief Medical Officer was critically injured in the accident as the "course car" was actually the doctors car, the impact broke the drivers seat of its mountings so the driver had a lucky escape as the CMO was sat behind him.

The CMO was resuscitated at the track and was out of action for a long time and is still suffering now nearly 30 years later.

How do I know this? He returned to england some years later and now lives in Cheshire and is a regular at Oulton Park where I work alongside him

Where can I find the book Rob Slotemaker - De Legende,
and what is the price of the book?
PcH

When did this test take place????

DCN

"Book" is a bit too much - I would rather call it a brochure, 36p, slightly smaller than DIN A4 size, written by the late Nico de Jong, former editor of Dutch motoring magazine "Autovisie". It was published probably ten years ago by Slotemaker's Anti-Slipschool following an initiative of Gerard van Oers, the director of the anti-skid-school at the time. Maybe they still have some copies available.

Otherwise, I will be happy to make photocopies of mine and hand them to you at our next meeting!

Let me get in a plug here for the book Racing Team Holland written in English by big Rob Wiedenhoff and published by John Hugenholtz it tells you more about Rob and about Dutch racing drivers through the years than any other.

Am I wrong, or did Wim Loos not wear his seatbelts?

Rob Slotemaker - one of a kind. I know many of the people he helped and the great stories just never end. A great driver, too, who probably cared more about having a good time than getting the absolute best out of his gift. Mind you, many more serious drivers achieved far less. Verstatile too; competitive in sportscars, touring cars, rallies, Formula 3. Played a instrumental role in the stunts during the making of Le Mans as well. I have some great onboard footage of him throwing his Camaro around Zandvoort, one rearwheel smoking, drifting towards another win. An epic story of one of the young drivers he trained: "I was a kid, still at school and this big red Camaro parks in front of the school. Rob walks into the classroom and the next thing I know we are heading for the airport, for we are to fly to Switzerland where I have to do some skid demonstrations. His way to promote the school was like: "If a kid can do this, so can you." So we take off in Rob's plane and while above the Alps, he all of a sudden says: "Oh my God, my heart, please take over..." and the passes out and the plane goes down big time. There is nothing I can do, all I see are these snowy mountains heading towards us at an alarming speed. So I think: 'This is it then'. Just before I freak out, Rob 'wakes up', pulls the plane up and all we see is sky. He can't stop laughing. Turns out he faked a heart attack, put his chin on his chest and all the time had the one eye I could not see open, looking at the instruments so he knew when to pull up..."

Doug, I enjoyed your latest BRM book but was puzzled that this wasn't in your book

In Autovisie 46/1966 (nov 18) was an article about Loos and Slotemaker testing a Parnell Lotus-BRM V8 "last friday" (so november 11, 1966) at Silverstone. Apart from them, Roy Pike took the wheel as well.
Apart from Tim Parnell, Raymond Mays was present (perhaps explaining that in our common memory it was a BRM which now turns out to be a Lotus-BRM, already mentioned above). Furthermore, Maarten van Wamelen (Slotemaker's team manager) and Hans Hugenholtz were there.
Both drove 30-40 laps, Rob a little quicker, clocking 1.39-1.40. Pike got fewer laps but was "a little" quicker than the Dutch boys; Slotemaker had some Silverstone experience, Loos had never been there before.

It was noted that soon there would be another test, either in Britain or BRM would meet them at Zandvoort.

Conclusion of the article was that neither Slotemaker nor Loos would replace Hill at the BRM works team any time soon (how modest!) but that it might be possible to let Slotemaker enter a private car; since BRM would launch a GT car soon ( ) that could be another field for cooperation.

In this article, there wasn't any mantion of Slotemaker's accident. Autovisie #48/1966 (december 2), the explanation follows after a letter from a reader: when the article was sent to Autovisie, it was known that an accident had happened, but the condition of Slotemaker wasn't. To avoid "panic" they skipped the accident.
Sure.
A more popular wexplanation was that an anti-skid expert like Slotemaker couldn't have an accident at all; otherwise, his reputation was ruined and the anti-skid school would suffer.

I don't think there was ever a follow-up to this test.

If you're behind the photocopier anyway make an extra one. You'll never know who would enjoy one

Frank - fair enough - so it was a Parnell Lotus which was crashed and therefore nothing to do with BRM's inventory of cars.

DCN

Correct. In which way it played any role in BRM's future plans - that's your role...
Loved your book by the way.

Thank you.

DCN

Not new but deemed appropriate considering the weather we are currently enjoying in our part of the world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zFHSiDfUBo

Drifting before the word was invented!

That is absolutely superb! Thanks Cavalier53.

I love the way he takes his right hand off the wheel to keep explaining points and I can now understand why Arjan said at the start of the thread that he participated in many rallies - how come he didn't win anything major? Was it because he concentrated on racing and the skid school?

Marvellous.

From memory, I believe that Rob did some pretty useful things with the old Daffodils (back to go backwards, forward to go forwards) and often made up great time going down mountain passes, as they were so underpowered going up them! He also drove in a couple of B.O.A.Cs (IIRC).

His class win in the 1964 Tour de France beating the all-conquering Alpine-Renaults was pretty special; here he is winning the handicap award for the Clermont-Ferrand Circuit



and at the finish at Nice with co-driver Terry Hunter

IMHO, Rob concentrated on his skid school only; the rest was fun. Take a look at my pictures from his last race; he was quick, no doubt about it (he won the production race outright) but he enjoyed himself by taking Gerlach sideways lap after lap.