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…
Once the FRECA season started, van ’t Hoff endured a further setback when he was knocked off his moped a week before the Monaco GP support race. He raced on the Monte Carlo streets with a broken collarbone.
That soon mended, but the shoulder was still plaguing him and van ’t Hoff was forced to skip some mid-season races. Once he returned to action, O’Keeffe passed him on to performance and mental coach Simon Fitchett, who had worked with David Coulthard, Sergio Perez and Jerome D’Ambrosio in F1.
“Dilano didn’t really need a driving coach, he needed... let’s call it a performance coach,” explains O’Keeffe. “He had an immense amount of natural ability and the thing that’s holding you back isn’t necessarily the technique – it’s the fact that you don’t have two arms. You need both arms in FRECA because they’re very physical cars to drive. Simon did an amazing job bringing Dilano back to full health after all the injuries.
"The kid was a real fighter in every sense of the word. He used to shadow-box me in the back of the truck and, despite him being very short, if he ever wanted to beat me up I’m pretty sure he could" Callan O’Keeffe
“It got to the point where he couldn’t turn the steering wheel because he was in so much pain. The kid was a real fighter in every sense of the word. He used to shadow-box me in the back of the truck and, despite him being very short, if he ever wanted to beat me up I’m pretty sure he could. He would never give up, he would never show that he was in pain, and literally it would be to the point where he couldn’t drive anymore before he took the time away last year.”
“With Dilano there was so much going on outside of racing, and a lot of things that he was having to deal with, so I started helping him work through those things. And we were just starting to see the benefits of it,” says Fitchett, who accompanied van ’t Hoff to races over the past 12 months.
“He changed a lot more in himself in the last year, and maybe the results on track weren’t reflecting where he was, and it wasn’t all down to him at all. Everyone can see his team-mates aren’t winning at the moment, but his little battle, which I try to assess at the beginning of the season, was being quicker than his team-mates.”
Once he was back in the cockpit in 2022, van ’t Hoff went on to claim a front-row start and a podium finish at Barcelona, and he had already notched up points finishes in 2023 – back with MP – at Imola and the Hungaroring. But even his preparations for this season were scuppered by the injury. For example, he couldn’t go back to the UAE to compete in what had been renamed the Formula Regional Middle East Championship; instead he was in hospital due to an infection in the bone in his shoulder.
“He missed half of last year, he missed FRMEC this year, all the pre-season testing, and then could only start getting fit after he came out of hospital,” explains Fitchett. “He had a lot to deal with, and that shoulder was creating so much pain for him. He always put on a brave face but there’s only so much you can do that. There was a lot of frustration at not being able to get back to where he wanted to physically, but he was getting there – these last couple of races his fitness was back.
“We were pretty much there with it. It would stiffen up sometimes, so we always kept on top of things at the track to keep it all relaxed, and he would do his training. It was a real challenge, because trying to tell a kid to slow down a bit and have a day’s rest, he wasn’t like that. He was, ‘No, no, I’ve got to get my fitness’, and I was, ‘Listen, you need to rest and let your body recuperate a bit and then you’ll feel even stronger when you come back.’
“He took a week to go and visit his girlfriend and when he came back he said, ‘My shoulder feels amazing’, and I’m like, ‘Yep, you’ve just had a rest.’ He was very determined. He was different from any other driver I’ve ever worked with. A lot of drivers come from very privileged backgrounds, but he understood the value of money and didn’t expect things to be done for him. He was a grafter, wanted to do everything himself. You would give him instructions and he would do it.”
Van ’t Hoff projected a tough image, but it was deceiving.
“He had that hard exterior,” points out O’Keeffe, “but when he let you in and understood that you were there to help and there was that trust, he had a heart of gold. He would do anything for the people that he loved. Looks can be deceiving. I remember the first time I saw him and I thought, ‘Whoa, I wouldn’t want to take him on in a fight,’ but underneath that was just a really nice kid. My thoughts are with the family and the team – I can’t imagine what it’s like.”
“He was a very private person, he didn’t really speak much, but behind that it couldn’t be more different,” says Fitchett. “Even how deeply I got to know him and how much he let me in, he wasn’t a communicator of things that could be seen in our world as being a bit soft or weak or whatever. But he did communicate it in a certain way, and it was only on Saturday night when I was with his family back at his dad’s place that his mother said, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for my son, you have no idea how highly he respected you and everything you said.’ I felt it from him, but he never communicated it.”
Both O’Keeffe and Fitchett are convinced that van ’t Hoff could have made it far in the sport.
“There’s no secret of how good the kid was,” states O’Keeffe. “He was back to being fit and strong. You looked at him and you’d think, ‘This kid’s got a really bright future ahead of him. Let’s see where he’s going to be in a year.’ Everybody had been waiting for the kid who’d been fighting back after his injury, and it’s the worst thing possible that could have happened.”
"Could he have got to Formula 1? It’s impossible to know. With him, there would never have been a lack of skill and determination. I think he had the ability and mentality to" Simon Fitchett
“He never really got going [in FRECA],” says Fitchett, who is part of an FIA-funded driver development programme. “Yes, maybe he came back in too soon from the injury, but with racing drivers trying to hold them back is impossible.
“I honestly believe if he was in the best cars he could have got there. Could he have got to Formula 1? It’s impossible to know. With him, there would never have been a lack of skill and determination. I think he had the ability and mentality to. If he had the right backing behind him the talent was there. We will never know, that’s the frustrating thing.”
