Drivers

Jan Lammers

Born in Zandvoort, Lammers grew up with racing all around him and as a teenager was an instructor at the famous "skid school" operated by racer Rob Slotemaker. At 17 Lammers won the Dutch Touring Car Championship in his first year of competition but it took him a number of years to get into top flight racing. The breakthrough came in 1978 when he won the European Formula 3 Championship, starting off with a triumphant victory at Zandvoort and then adding wins at Monza, Magny-Cours and Karlskoga.

The success led to an offer to join Elio de Angelis in the Shadow F1 team, with backing from the Samson tobacco company. The two youngsters did well but while de Angelis was able to move on to Team Lotus, Lammers struggled for a big break. He made a big impression qualifying his ATS fourth at Long Beach in 1980. He switched to Ensign later in the year and then ended up with Teddy Yip's Theodore before breaking his thumb in an accident.

After that he struggled in various parts of the world before finally finding his feet in sports car racing with Tom Walkinshaw's TWR Jaguar sports car team which led to second place in the World Sportscar Championship in 1987 and victory at Le Mans in 1988 with Andy Wallace and Johnny Dumfries and a win in the Daytona 24 Hours in 1990 with Davy Jones and Wallace.

Once the sports car faded away, Jan tried to get back into single-seaters and in 1992, after an absence of 10 years, he returned to F1 with the struggling March F1 operation. After that was over he returned to the TWR fold with a Volvo in the British Touring Car Championship in the TWR Volvo estate while still looking for a way back to F1, notably when testing for the stillborn DAMS F1 team. In the end, however, he gravitated to Japan where like many others he earned good money and eventually set up his own sports car team, called Racing for Holland which raced Dome-Judds. These have been quite successful over the years and Lammers is now in the process of setting up a team to run Jos Verstappen in the new A1 Grand Prix series.