Image exposes glaring issue before Dilano van ‘t Hoff’s fatal crash at Spa

The motorsport world has been left heartbroken after the death of a rising star in what has been labelled as an avoidable situation.

The conditions before teen's crash death

The death of 18-year-old Dilano van ‘t Hoff rocked the motorsport industry.

The 18-year-old was racing in the 2023 Formula Regional European Championship at Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit when the horror incident unfolded.

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Tragically, he became the 49th driver to die at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit and the first since Anthoine Hubert in 2019. Four officials have also died in incidents over the years at the track.

Sadly the incident could have and should have been avoided.

The heavens above the famous track opened up with a downpour leaving visibility at extremely low levels.

Despite that the race continued on with safety cars only coming onto the track following minor incidents and one car stopping off to the side of the track.

It then resulted in what was effectively a one lap shootout with the field on cold tyres with visibility still at low levels due to the spray coming off the track.

Far too young. Photo: Twitter

Running in 19th place in the 34-driver field, van ‘t Hoff collided with a barrier before sitting side-on in the middle of the track.

Irish driver Adam Fitzgerald then crashed into the side of the Dutchman’s vehicle, causing it to tear in half.

Van ‘t Hoff was sadly pronounced dead while being transported to a nearby hospital.

Images of the conditions prior to the fatal crash exposed the ridiculous nature in the race being allowed to continue.

A tweet uploaded on Saturday night showed off a side-by-side of the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix and Saturday’s race.

The first image shows Max Verstappen in the Red Bull driving behind the safety car under equally torrential conditions, moments later the race was red flagged.

The second photo shows the lead car in the Formula Regional race with several cars in close proximity behind. The only issue is because of the spray, caused by the downpour, the rest of the field aren’t visible at all.

f1 spa 2021 the conditions
freca raced in
today pic.twitter.com/DEp9XBjoye

— lucia¹⁶🥈 (@stylecIerc) July 1, 2023

After almost three hours after the initial red flag the 2021 Belgain Grand Prix was restarted but the downpour forced the cars to follow the safety car for two laps. in order to complete the minimum number required for classification points to be awarded, before the race was again red flagged by race director Michael Masi.

The reasoning for calling the race off was due to the slippery nature of the track and the extremely poor visibility.

Sound familiar?

During the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix the race was red flagged after only two laps as weather wreaked havoc.

Pierre Gasly unloaded on FIA officials after the race following a terrifying near-miss a recovery vehicle.

This is INCREDIBLY scary!! How the f*** can this happen after 2014?? #JapaneseGP#Gasly#f1pic.twitter.com/wHA7Wg3hdZ

— Silja Rulle (@SiljaRulle) October 9, 2022

On Sunday, following the Sprint Shootout, current F1 star Lance Stroll hit out and called for changes to make the track safer.

“It’s not fair what happened, and that corner needs to be looked at and changed because we’ve lost two young talents in like five years. It needs to be changed, just that corner. We’re going to go there in a few weeks.

“It’s horrible what happened today, and we lost a member of the racing family. We seriously need to think about what to do that that corner, because it’s never fun going through there.

“Every time we go through there, we put our lives on the line. And today we saw something bad happen, and it’s not right.”

Stroll was asked if the issue had been brought up by the drivers to which he said it had, but it gets swept aside.

“They need to do something. We’ll be playing with fire in a couple of weeks’ time. Again. And not just us, the F2 kids, F3 kids, everyone that goes through that corner every week.

“Even if it’s dry, and someone loses their car, it’s a blind corner, you hit the wall and come back into the middle of the track. A car comes at you at 300 plus kilometres an hour, you’re toast.”

Tributes poured in after the teen’s death. (Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)

Two-time Formula 1 world champion Verstappen demanded action be taken to provide better protection for drivers.

“It’s incredibly sad,” said Verstappen.

“I didn’t know him personally, he was an up and coming Dutch racing driver. He had the same dreams we had, when we were that age wanting to get to F1.

“It is incredibly sad for the whole family and the team MP Motorsport.

“We have to look into these situations. It is easy to blame the track but looking at how wet it was and these kind of things we have to look at it for the future to look at what we can do better to protect drivers, because I think today was unnecessary clearly.”

The Formula 1 world will descend onto the Spa-Francorchamps circuit for the Belgian Grand Prix on July 30.