Editors: Marcel Visbeen, Dennis Drenthe, Mattijs Diepraam. Feedback: feedback#carelgodindebeaufort.nl (# = @). This tribute site is in no way connected to the Beaufort family.

Racing Team Holland

We will never know for sure, but Carel was said to open a new chapter by joining the Racing Team Holland shortly before he died. RTH was co-founded by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (famously known as the Soldier of Orange), Ben van Marken, Willem Blankevoort, Fred van der Vlugt and Zandvoort track director Hans Hugenholtz, while Carel's fellow Porsche driver Ben Pon came up with the team's first car, a Porsche 904 GTS.

Along with Henk van Zalinge, who was part of the embryonic meeting in Zandvoort restaurant 'De Vijverhut', Dutch touring-car legend Rob Slotemaker was signed up as the team's first driver, while Jan Dijkstra (brother of Olympic figure skating legend Sjoukje Dijkstra) would be chief engineer. Dijkstra had been a mechanic for Carel as well.

Although Carel never actually raced under the RTH banner he was put forward by Hazelhoff as one of its star drivers. Along with Pon and Slotemaker he was supposed to be the main figurehead of this new Dutch national racing scheme, supported by an alliance of Dutch companies. Carel’s latest acquisitions in 1964 – two Porsche 904s which he bought concurrently with a Corvette Stingray that he imported from the States – would be embedded into the RTH, with Carel apparently looking to move back into sportscar racing.

Carel did have talks with Hazelhoff about about his switching allegion but both Henk van Zalinge and Carel's sister Cornelie have doubts to whether Carel would have actually jumped ship to RTH. Talking to Rob Wiedenhoff and Ed Heuvink in their book Racing Team Holland, Van Zalinge offers that Carel was too much of a loner to have parted with Ecurie Maarsbergen while Cornelie states that Carel and Hazelhoff didn't get on too well. The whole issue of Godin de Beaufort driving for RTH became moot when Hazelhoff received a phone call from the Amsterdam post office that his telegram sent ten minutes ago with his latest offer would not be seen by the intended recipient. As the quite distressed office clerk told him: "We would rather not deliver your telegram to Mr De Beaufort... It is too late..."

Racing Team Holland would move on without Carel. Under the protection of Ben Pon Sr and prince Bernhard the RTH was allowed to see the light of day and blossom. In its two incarnations it spawned the international careers of some of the very best Dutch drivers in history, such as Gijs van Lennep, Jan Lammers, Huub Rothengatter and Arie Luyendijk.

More recently, the RTH name was kept alive in GT racing by Hans Hugenholtz Jr, the current Spyker CEO and a prolific sportscar driver himself. Apart from the RTH name being carried on Hugenholtz's Chrysler Viper GTS-R at Le Mans in 1999 and in the French GT championships of 2000-2001, the first Spyker effort at Le Mans (where Hugenholtz shared a C8-R with Peter Kox and Norman Simon) also bore the RTH logo that was originally designed by Jan Apetz.

Today, RTH is mainly active in historic racing, with Hugenholtz taking part in such events as the Goodwood Revival Meeting and the Tour Auto with cars such as a Ford GT40, a Lotus Elan and a Cooper 'Monaco'.


Pon and Slotemaker with their RTH cars.

his own team and those that entered him

This section features the outfits that ran his cars.