INDEPENDENCE DAY.
It’s a sunny, warm summer day and the sands of Zandvoort are teeming with people strolling in the strong breeze. This wide tidal beach seems to stretch forever and its barren immensity is a welcomed contrast to what is one of the densest populated states in Europe. Windmills forcefully turn their blades on the tip of the horizon, capturing a fraction of the energy that turns the sea into a caramel coloured spectacle of crushing waves and bubbly foam.
The first car races started in Zandvoort in the 1930s, on a street circuit, meandering through the dunes. Mayor Henri van Alphen, the city’s top official at the time, looked at motorsports as a way to revive the ailing fortunes of the once glamorous 19th century seaside resort. His dream would bear fruits in 1948, when on the 7th of August Prince Bira of Siam won the inaugural race. In the 1950s, the track made its way into the then even more select roster of Formula 1 venues, before a string of deadly accidents forced it off the calendar of the world’s top motorsport series, with Niki Lauda winning the last race, held in 1985.
On the 29th and the 30th of June this year the track ditched its trademark orange to welcome one of the world’s largest gatherings of Alfa Romeo enthusiasts. The invasion of the reds was treated with the legendary courteous Dutch attitude as Zandvoort welcomed 6,000 people and 1,600 cars that gathered for a weekend of racing, celebrations and the characteristic tire kicking. The event is organised by Stichting Club van Alfa Romeo Bezitters (SCARB), a 2,600-members independent organisation, established in 1978.
“Nowadays we have a small committee who starts organising the next year’s event straight after the latest edition is finished. We are about 11 people. There is one Manager and there are others who arrange the tracktime, the posters, the catering, the paddocks, the special display, the guest, the races, the club-shop, something to do for the kids and more,” says Theo Meinster, a member of the board of the SCARB, the editor of their club magazine and part of the small organising committee of the Spettacolo Sportivo.
“We always have special cars in attendance and we also mark special anniversaries with celebrations, such as the ones we did this year in honour of the 70 years of the Giulietta, “ continues Theo, who owned a few Alfas himself and currently settled for a Giulietta and a 916 Spider, after 5 33’s, a Giulia and a Giulia GTV.
