Jos Verstappen | The “forgotten” drivers of F1

Johannes Franciscus “Jos” Verstappen (born 4 March 1972) is a Dutch former racing driver.
After his F1 career Jos Verstappen has won races in A1 Grand Prix and Le Mans Series LMP2 races (winning the 24 hours of Le Mans LMP2 class in 2008). Prior to his F1 debut in 1994, he was also the German Formula Three champion and Masters of Formula Three winner in 1993. Jos was the most successful Dutch F1 racing driver before he retired and began mentoring his son Max in Formula 1. Info from Wiki

Bio by Stephen Latham

Born on the 4th March, 1972, in Montfort, Limburg, Netherlands, from starting in karts, Johannes Franciscus ‘Jos’ Verstappen went on to participate in 107 Grands Prix with Benetton, Simtek, Footwork Arrows, Tyrrell, Stewart, Arrows and Minardi between 1994 and 2003.

He began kart racing when he was eight and from 1982 onwards he participated in national competitions. He became Dutch junior champion in 1984 and won it again two years later then in 1989 took two European titles plus the 1989 Japanese Kart Grand Prix. At the end of 1991 he made the transition to car racing, with support from Philips, Marlboro and Huub Rothengatter. He secured a drive in Formula Opel Lotus with Van Amersfoort Racing and was dominant, with the only time he lost points was at Zolder, where a somersault ends his race. On the weekends he was not racing in the Benelux championship he contested Euroseries Opel Lotus races and, after winning the former series, he focuses on the European Championship and took two victories at Zolder. He and Martijn Koene represented the Netherlands in the Opel Lotus Nations Cup and to round his year off he also received the N.A.V. Dutch Driver of the Year award. At this point several F3 teams were interested in him, including West Surrey Racing and Alan Docking Racing, though he eventually chose to contest German F3 and signed for Willy Webber’s team, WTS. During the European winter season, he headed to New Zealand for the International Formula Atlantic championship and, driving a Swift Toyota (which was several years old) for the Graeme Lawrence Racing team, he took three wins and three more podiums, though he had two non-finishes at Wigram, and went on to finish fourth overall in the series. Upon returning to Europe, he competed in the German F3 championship with WTS and started off by finishing third with the Dallara F393 in the first round at Zolder. Although he retired in the second race and was fifth and fourth at Hockenheim, he then had an impressive run of results in the next nine races, taking second place finishes at Nurburgring (twice) and Diepholz Airfield plus third at Monaco and victories at Wunstorf Airfield (twice) and Norisring (twice) and the prestigious Marlboro Masters at Zandvoort. There was a break in his successful run, with a retirement at Diepholz but in the following races he had two second place results at Nurburgring and Alemannenring plus four victories at Nurburgring, Alemannenring and Avus (twice). His performances attracted interest from the F1 teams and at the end of the year he tested an Arrows F1 car at Estoril, saying of it “I never thought it would be so fast. But by the third lap I was really enjoying it, it was fantastic. After 10-15 laps it feels normal, and you find yourself wanting more. I must say I thought it would be quite difficult, the jump from F3 to F1. I was thinking about the power, the brakes, the fast corner. But really, it was not so difficult…On the first lap I thought, ‘Shit!’ I never thought it would be so fast. But by the third lap I was really enjoying it, it was fantastic. After 10-15 laps it feels normal, and you find yourself wanting more. Still, it’s very fast…” In the afternoon, his times tumbled further and at the end of 65 laps, he’d set a best of 1m14.45s, which would have been good enough for tenth on the grid and just 0.07s slower than Derek Warwick. He had another run two days later, while still suffering a stiff neck and shoulders from his run on the Tuesday though by his fifth lap, he was as quick as he had been at the earlier test. Unfortunately he crashed, damaging two corners and the nose after spinning into the barrier and the team packed up and years later he admitted he was “completely destroyed” after his first day of running and said “I can remember after that day at Estoril, we had contact with all of the teams except Ferrari and Williams”. Two months after this test, he was invited to test with McLaren at Silverstone.

After much negotiating over the winter, he and Rothengatter signed a deal with Benetton for 1994. It was initially as a test driver though his race debut came sooner than expected, as JJ Lehto injured his neck testing the new B194 pre-season so he replaced him for the opening two rounds, in the Brazilian and Pacific Grands Prix. On his debut in Brazil, there was a four-car pile-up as he and Irvine came up to lap the Ligier of Eric Bernard. All three were rapidly closing on Martin Brundle’s McLaren, which had suffered an engine failure. In order to avoid the McLaren, Eddie Irvine jinked left as Jos attempted an overtake on that side, forcing him on to the grass; Jos then lost control of his car and somersaulted over the McLaren (Brundle’s helmet was impacted by the airborne Benetton although he escaped serious injury). During the weekend he won the Copa Caloi, a cycle race for F1 drivers and mechanics, but he retired from the following race, the Pacific GP. Lehto returned to the cockpit at San Marino, despite some question marks over his fitness but after qualifying fifth he stalled on the grid and his car was hit from behind by Pedro Lamy’s Lotus. He was running third in Spain before an engine failure ended his race and scored a point in Canada but he was replaced once again by Jos for the French GP. He retired in France though the following race in Germany was memorable, for the wrong reasons. He was unable to use his own car in practice due to a spin on Gerhard Berger’s oil so the team put him in Schumacher’s car but he struggled with its set-up and spun off the track. But during a routine pit stop in the race, highly flammable fuel sprayed onto the car and within seconds a firestorm engulfed the B194, Jos and most of the mechanics. A number of mechanics had jumped clear of the car with their uniforms ablaze and were aided by members of other teams while crewmen trained their fire extinguishers on the blaze and the worst of it was swiftly extinguished. Miraculously, Jos managed to escape the inferno, suffering only minor burns on his nose and right foot and it said the worst injuries were to Simon Morley (the sub-assembly mechanic who’d taken on the job of handling the fuel hose) and Jos, as burning petrol had seeped inside their protective headgear. Recalling the incident, Jos said “I remember coming in for what I thought was a regular pitstop. Sitting in the car, I would always open my visor because when I stood still I would sweat a lot, so as I came to a halt I opened my helmet to get some fresh air. Then I saw the fluid coming. This was before I could smell anything, and that is why I was waving my arm. Then everything went up (in flames) and it was suddenly dark and black, and I couldn’t breathe. It was a situation you don’t normally think about: it is like you are suddenly put in a dark room, and then you think, ‘I need to get out. It was a struggle to get the steering wheel off and that took me a couple of seconds. Then I had to release the belts. So there were a lot of things I had to do before I stood up and realised what had happened.” Following this he was eighth at Silverstone then high points were consecutive third places in Hungary and Belgium (due to Schumacher’s post-race disqualification) and a fifth place at Portugal. He retired from the European GP but, despite his earlier encouraging results, Johnny Herbert took over the drive for the final two races of the season. Recalling the B194, he stated “it was a very difficult car. You could not feel the limit and so you were pushing and pushing and then suddenly it would have oversteer. Normally when you get oversteer you can control it but the Benetton would go very suddenly and so you ended up having a spin. I had big problems with that car.”

Although hopeful of driving for the team in 1995, Herbert was retained instead but Benetton helped him land a drive with Simtek alongside Domenico Schiattarella. He retired from the first three races due to mechanical issues but put in some great performances. In Brazil, he had moved up from twenty-fourth to fourteenth before his clutch failed. In Argentina, the tight and twisty nature of the circuit suited him and the car and after qualifying fourteenth, in the race he was up to sixth by lap seventeen, having held off Berger’s Ferrari early on. However, a problem at the pit stop caused him to lose places and the gearbox broke soon afterwards. There were more good qualifying performances at Imola and Barcelona but his twelfth place result in Spain was his only finish. At Monaco, Schiattarella outqualified him for the first time by qualifying twentieth while Jos suffered further gearbox problems and was twenty third. Due to a collision on the first lap, which caused the track to be completely blocked, the race was halted and a restart was required. Unfortunately, both drivers’ were out of the race without either car completing a racing lap, as Schiattarella’s damaged car was pushed away and a damaged gearbox kept Jos from taking the restart. On the Thursday before the race weekend, team principal Nick Wirth held a press conference in which he admitted that the outfit faced imminent closure unless it received money that had been promised by various sponsors. Negotiations with the potential backers and sponsors eventually failed and Simtek Grand Prix went into voluntary liquidation.

Later in 1995, he had a test with the Footwork Arrows team, following his run with them two years earlier, and signed with them for 1996. The team was partly bought by Tom Walkinshaw, whose financial backing kept them from going bust though the full takeover was not completed until the halfway point of the season. Jos had his season’s best qualifying and race result in Argentina, starting seventh and earning a well-earned point with sixth place, after an exciting duel with Coulthard and Irvine. However, this was the only finish he had in the first half of the season and he suffered numerous mechanical failures, with his next finish not coming until July when he was tenth at Silverstone. A sticking throttle at Spa caused a huge accident and left him with permanent neck injuries and his final finishes were eight and eleventh in Italy and Japan. The team put a lot of time and resources into the development of the new Bridgestone tyres as the Japanese manufacturer planned to enter F1 in 1997 and Jos covered many test miles on several different tracks to test the new rubber. During the year, he drove his Arrows at Zandvoort at the Marlboro Masters and in front of 85,000 fans he beat the lap record with a time of 51.684s. The team finished ninth in the Constructors’ Championship with one point but though Tom Walkinshaw was quite keen to keep Jos in the team, it never came to fruition and the seats were taken by Damon Hill and Pedro Diniz.

In 1997 he joined Tyrrell though the year was largely disappointing as the Tyrrell 025 ran Ford V8s and this came at the expense of power against the V10 powered cars. However, there were some excellent moments for him and in Melbourne, although he qualified twenty first, he made up seven places in the first lap but went off on lap three in an attempt to pass Ukyo Katayama. He started sixteenth at Buenos Aires, where the the car was running with the new side-mounted ‘x-wings’, and, due to a multiple car incident, he gained five places on lap one and was seventh by lap nineteen. He pitted soon after and was back up to seventh at around half distance but an engine failure ended his race. In Monaco, despite spinning, he kept it on the road and finished eighth while team mate Salo ran without a pit stop and came home fifth. He only had a single tyre stop in Barcelona and rose to eleventh, keeping Irvine’s Ferrari behind him for the last thirteen laps, though his most impressive performance came in Canada. After qualifying fourteenth, he was tenth on the first lap and moved up four more places in the next fourteen laps and was on course to take points when Ralf Schumacher crashed, but gearbox problems ended his race. After starting twenty first at Spa he had moved up to eighth but under pressure from Irvine he slid out of the race. There were a total of eight finishes, with fifteenth in Brazil, tenth in San Marino and Germany, eleventh and twelfth in Spain and Austria plus thirteenth and sixteenth in the Japanese and European Grands Prix, with the best result his eighth place in Monaco. Before the following season, the team were sold to British American Tobacco, who intended to run as British American Racing in 1999, after one final year under the Tyrrell banner. Ken Tyrrell wanted to retain Jos alongside Toranosuke Takagi but BAR insisted on Ricardo Rosset, so, unhappy with this decision, he left the team. Although Jos didn’t score any points this year, he and his wife celebrated the birth of their son Max.

Without a regular drive for the following year, he did some testing in a Benetton with a view to him re-joining in that role. However, he returned to racing with the Stewart team at the French GP, replacing Jan Magnussen, though it was not a particularly happy or successful time for him. In his first race, his qualifying pace was only a fraction slower than Rubens Barrichello’s and he out-qualified him at the next race. He was plagued by reliability issues and in nine starts, he retired from six, with three engine and three gearbox failures, with his only finishes twelfth in France plus thirteenth in the Hungarian and Luxembourg Grands Prix. He wasn’t retained for the following year as Johnny Herbert was signed to partner Barrichello and Jos was was left looking for a drive again.

Near the end of 1998 he became the test driver for Honda’s Formula One project, where many of his former Tyrrell colleagues were already working, and teamed up with Rupert Manwaring and Harvey Postlethwaite. He signed a three-year contract with Honda Racing Developments and the plan was to test the new car in 1999 and enter the Championship in 2000. The project looked promising, with the car setting competitive times in tests alongside better funded, and more established, F1 teams but sadly, Postlethwaite suffered a fatal heart attack during a test in Barcelona. The project was put on hold though Honda eventually changed their plans from becoming a team to a works engine supplier, supplying BAR and Jordan in 2000.

Jos was again without an F1 drive but though he tested for Jordan, this came to nothing, then 2000 saw a full time return to racing with Arrows. The A21’s speed allowed both drivers to battle with the front runners at several circuits and its small fuel tank meant the cars were often lighter than their rivals. At Melbourne he made up four places at the start and ran tenth but his suspension failed then in Brazil he finished eighth, which became seventh after Coulthard was excluded. At Imola he was running tenth before technical problems intervened and he finished fourteenth though drove well in the Canadian GP, finishing fifth and taking points. In Austria he and Pedro de la Rosa ran fourth and fifth until mechanical problems ended their races and he was thirteenth and fifteenth in Hungary and Belgium. He ran as high as eighth in Spain until his gearbox failed while his best result would come at Monza, when he took an impressive fourth place result behind Michael Schumacher, Mika Häkkinen and Ralf Schumacher and was tenth in the final race of the season in Malaysia. He was retained by the team for 2001, with the Supertec engines being replaced by Asiatech units, and Enrique Bernoldi took over from de la Rosa. Although he was generally outqualified by Bernoldi, his race pace was much quicker and in the two opening rounds he was tenth in Australia and there was an impressive performance at Malaysia. Having started eighteenth, he made a great start and ran as high as second but this position was lost after he was forced to stop for fuel and dropped out of the points in the closing stages of the race, eventually finishing seventh. He took the team’s only point with a sixth place finish in Austria but unfortunately, at Interlagos, he ran into the back of leader Juan Pablo Montoya. His finishes included twelfth in Spain and Hungary, eighth in Monaco, tenth in Great Britain, Canada (despite retiring) and Belgium, thirteenth in France, ninth in Germany and fifteenth in Japan. Arrows finished tenth in the Constructors’ Championship, with one point. Tom Walkinshaw had secured a supply of customer Cosworth engines for the following season but although Jos had re-signed to continue with them in 2002, he was dropped in favour of Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

He then spent a year without racing but returned in 2003, joining the European Minardi team alongside Justin Wilson. They started the year with a primarily black car, featuring heavy sponsorship from owner Paul Stoddart’s European Aviation brand, plus there was also strong support from Superfund and when the Dutch business Trust increased their sponsorship the car gained a black & white split livery. His season started with eleventh and thirteenth in Australia and Malaysia and there was a chance of scoring points at the rain soaked Brazilian GP, where a number of drivers (including Michael Schumacher) retired but he was out of the race after thirty one laps due to a spin. There was a twelfth place result in Spain, followed by retirement in Austria and Monaco though his results after this included ninth in Canada, fourteenth in the European GP plus sixteenth and fifteenth in the French and British Grands Prix. In July, Wilson was signed by Jaguar Racing and Minardi signed Nicolas Kiesa, who did not score any points but finished all five races he contested. During the season, Stoddart purchased several Arrows A23s (following their team’s administration) and Jos tested one at Mugello to assess its suitability. In the last races of the year, he retired in Germany and Italy though was twelfth in Hungary, tenth in the USA and fifteenth in Japan, which would be his final F1 race. It had been a challenging year for the team and the Cosworth powered PS03 secured no points, with Minardi finishing last in the Constructors’ Championship.

A further two years without racing followed but he then contested the A1 Grand Prix series with the Racing for Holland team for the 2005–2006 season. Results with the Lola B02/50-Zytek included fourth in Portugal, Mexico and Australia, fifth and sixth in Malaysia and Indonesia, with his best results second in Mexico and victory at Durban, South Africa, and the team were seventh in the final standings. After another two year hiatus, he joined Van Merksteijn Motorsport in 2008 to contest the Le Mans Series and the Le Mans 24 Hours. Partnered by team owner Peter Van Merksteijn Sr. in a Porsche RS Spyder they won four of five races (Catalunya, Spa, Nurburgring and Silverstone) plus were second at Monza and took both the drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles in LMP2 class. The highlight of the season came at Le Mans when, joined by Jeroen Bleekemolen, the Dutch trio finished tenth overall and first in class, seven laps ahead of their nearest rivals. He returned to Le Mans the following year, driving an LMP1 prototype for the Aston Martin Racing team alongside Anthony Davidson and Darren Turner but they only finished thirteenth overall and eleventh in class.

In 2012, driving a Vita4One BMW Z4 GT3, he contested the Baku GT City Challenge with former F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve and they finished sixth. In rallying, he contested 2022’s Ypres Rally as an independent entrant and has competed in the European Rally Championship since 2025. During this time, he coached and managed his son Max, from karting at an early age to winning four F1 World Drivers’ Championship titles (at the time of writing).

Jos Verstappen – Dutch courage: the unfulfilled promise of Jos Verstappen – from

Gallery F1 Other

Name:	Jos	Surname:	Verstappen
Country:	Netherlands	Entries:	107
Starts:	107	Podiums:	2
Fastest laps:	0	Points:	17
Start year:	1994	End year:	2003
Active years:	8

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