Dutch teenager Dilano van ‘t Hoff died in an accident during a wet Formula Regional European Championship race at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit on Saturday, his team said.
The 18-year-old, who won the 2021 Spanish F4 championship, was racing for the Dutch MP Motorsport outfit at the Belgian Grand Prix circuit.
“MP Motorsport is deeply saddened to confirm that our driver, Dilano van’t Hoff has passed away as a result of a crash during the second race of the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine at Spa Francorchamps,” Dutch MP said in a statement.
The race, in wet conditions with heavy spray, was on the support programme for the 24 Hours of Spa endurance race.
Formula Two teams and drivers competing at the Austrian Grand Prix held a minute’s silence.
“Dilano died in pursuit of his dream to reach the pinnacle of motorsport. Along with the entire motorsport community, our thoughts are with his family and loved ones,” Formula One chief executive Stefano Domenicali said.
Media reports said van ‘t Hoff was caught up in a multicar collision during a late restart.
The incident occurred not far along the track from where French driver Anthoine Hubert died in an F2 race at Spa-Francorchamps in 2019.
“Story of the race isn’t today we lost a young driver at Spa today, my thoughts are with him and his family,” Aston Martin F1 driver Lance Stroll.
“It’s not fair what happened, and that corner needs to be looked at and changed, because we lost two young talents in like five years, it needs to be changed. We’re going there in a few weeks, it’s horrible what happened today, we lost a member of the racing family.
“Seriously need to think about what to do with that corner as it’s never fun going through there, every time we go through there we put our lives on the line, today we saw something bad happen. It’s not right.”
Other F1 drivers at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix spoke out about the track at the Belgian track.
Alpine driver Pierre Gasly said: “I really hope all the people involved in safety and looking after the safety of all the drivers are going to take some actions as it’s not the first time and it shouldn’t have taken place, should never have been in such a situation already a few years back, it definitely needs reviewing.”
Source: www.espn.com