Yep,
One ongoing topic at Zandvoort has been the use of orange flares by fans, and van Leeuwen has made it clear that they are not allowed at the circuit.
“Because of the popularity of the sport and Max, fans brought in these flares in Austria a few years ago,” he said.
“The image looked great on TV, and they shot footage with the flares. So a normal fan, not a hooligan but a normal fan, thinks he is a good fan if he brings a flare.
“Now you see that there are so many that it's dangerous, and it’s not good for your health. We have to inform the people now you're not a good fan if you have a flare, you're a good fan if you don't have a flare. If you see a flare that you say, ‘Come on guy, this is dangerous for my health.’
“This is also dangerous for the drivers, because I think two years ago during the formation lap in Austria, the drivers had poor vision. That was something that a normal fan did not know. They just saw two guys with a flare and then there were four guys and then eight and 16 and 32. Now we have to bring it down."
Easy enough to put it in big type on the ticketing website and the ticket itself: "DO NOT BRING FLARES".DDopey wrote: ↑21 Aug 2023, 18:47They do not make it really clear they are not allowed in advance. It's there, in the rules of the event. But imo they could have stated a bit more louder, we know how people are. People dont read, its needs to be bing and in their face "NO FLARES". So I am not getting my hopes up, hope it will be ok on the straight so I am not annoyed by them
Imre Van Leeuwen, Dutch GP Director: "Together with F1 our safety manager and the people involved from our team
had meetings with Austria, with Belgium, with Barcelona, places where lots of Dutch fans go."
“It's good to celebrate and have a party, but it's not good to intimidate people, or behave in a disrespectful way.
“So yes, it's very important to stop that. We have a work group with the other promoters.
We took extra measures on informing the people on what do we like, and what we don't like.
Of course, we will punish people. It's important topic for us, that everybody feels safe.
“We have now an information point so if something happens to you, you can tell your story there, there will be reports,
we can calm you down if something nasty happens.
“We're working with the police and trying to inform people as well as we can.
Luckily, in Austria it went very well I think this year, and I didn't hear of any issues."
.Just_a_fan wrote: ↑21 Aug 2023, 20:23I sometimes wonder if the people responsible for organising the events do a rubbish job merely to get some controversy
and thus media interest. The equivalent of click bait, one might say.
That particular photo isn't but this is what they don't want, you can even hear people coughing in the video!