Rob Slotemaker
b Batavia (Dutch East Indies, now Jakarta, Indonesia), June 13, 1929 – d Zandvoort (Netherlands), September 16, 1979
A legendary Dutch racer, ‘Sloot’ was as spectacular as he was versatile. Sideways in everything he drove, he tried to break into single-seaters first before settling on an enduring touring-car career combined with his own driving school within the confines of the Zandvoort race track.
Slotemaker never made it to F1 but was scheduled to make his Grand Prix debut in a Maarsbergen-entered ex-works Porsche for the 1962 Dutch GP, alongside Ben Pon and Carel himself. Eventually the plan fell through at the last moment and Rob’s No.16 entry was taken over by Wolfgang Seidel, who fielded a factory-rented Emeryson for the occasion.
Slotemaker briefly continued his single-seater career as the works DAF development driver, racing DAF-powered Alexis F3 car in 1965, before concentrating on sportscars and touring cars with the Racing Team Holland that he co-founded. He was also a very avid rally driver and fostered the career of young Jan Lammers, to whom he was like a father.
A mainstay of the seventies Dutch touring-car scene, he became best known racing a thundering Camaro to many wins. It was also the car that killed him when it left the circuit on a vicious patch of oil and hit a stewards’ vehicle attending to another car during an insignificant race at Zandvoort in September 1979. The fateful corner was subsequently renamed Rob Slotemakerbocht.
