How good was Dilano van ’t Hoff, the 18-year-old Dutch talent who tragically lost his life in a Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine crash at Spa last Saturday?
In 2021, it seemed that he was a huge talent. Fifteen wins from 41 Formula 4 starts in his rookie season of car racing indicated that here was a big name for the future. He blitzed the Spanish championship (current FIA F3 runner-up Pepe Marti was a distant third) with MP Motorsport. And even before that, he’d been robbed of the UAE title by a single point when a late safety car during a race in the season finale in Dubai eradicated the gap he’d established to neutralise a false-start penalty.
Van ’t Hoff graduated to FRegional with MP for the late-season races in 2021, a precursor to a full season with the Dutch squad in 2022. But this is where he hit some bumps in the road, which meant he could show only glimpses of his potential.
Before his car racing career, he had been suffering from an injury to his left shoulder sustained in a karting crash. The F4 Tatuus is not a physical car to drive, but the Italian constructor’s Regional machine is renowned for its heavy steering.
Ex-Red Bull and Lotus F1 junior Callan O’Keeffe now runs School of Send, a business set up to help young drivers with all off-track affairs, and the British-based South African began working with van ’t Hoff early in 2022.
“We were in Barcelona for the pre-season test and he had to keep adjusting his hands through the flat-out last corner when we were using the old layout with the chicane, because he had so much pain in his left shoulder that he couldn’t keep his hands on the wheel in the right place,” he says.
Before this, van ’t Hoff had gone back to the UAE to race in the FRegional Asian Championship with Pinnacle Motorsport. “He missed the first round because he was sick – I think he had COVID – and then one of the next races he jumps in the car and sticks it on pole position as a rookie,” continues O’Keeffe. “I think he had a great deal of natural ability. He was what I would call a raw old-school racing driver. He just got in the car and made it go as fast as it would go. He was seat of the pants, drive it to the limit. That was really refreshing to see, because I think it’s quite rare nowadays.”
That pole came in Dubai, against drivers of the calibre of Marti, Arthur Leclerc, Dino Beganovic, Paul Aron, Isack Hadjar, Jak Crawford. A lot of F1 juniors there…
Source: Autosport