There were plans for racing in Zandvoort before the war - the first street race was held on 3 June 1939 - but the circuit itself came from an accident of occupation. During the Second World War the German army built communications roads through the dunes. After liberation, those tarmac strips lay unused along the North Sea coast, curving in shapes no peacetime engineer would have drawn. In July 1946 the 1927 Le Mans winner S. C. H. "Sammy" Davis was brought in as a design advisor; the layout he sketched was partly dictated by what already existed. John Hugenholtz - often miscredited as the designer - came in as chairman of the Dutch Auto Racing Club and became the first track director in 1949. The first race, the Prijs van Zandvoort, ran on 7 August 1948. The Dutch Grand Prix arrived two years later. By 1955 Zandvoort was hosting the first true Formula One Dutch Grand Prix as part of the World Championship - and it stayed on the calendar almost every year through 1985.

Then the noise problem caught up. Zandvoort had grown around the circuit, and the people living closest to the track wanted their evenings back. In January 1987 the Provincial Council of North Holland approved a plan to shorten the southern end of the circuit, moving it away from the housing estates. Months later, the operating company went bankrupt. The track, owned by the municipality, looked finished. A new foundation was formed, and by 1989 a stripped-down 2.526-kilometre Club Circuit had been remodelled out of the surviving northern half. The disposed southern section became a bungalow park and homes for the local football and field-hockey clubs. Through the 1990s Zandvoort survived on touring cars, Formula 3, motorcycle events. In 1995 the Dutch government granted it "A Status"; in 2001 the redesigned 4.307-kilometre Grand Prix Circuit reopened with a new pits building designed by John Hugenholtz's son. But there was no Formula One. There had not been for sixteen years, and it was not coming back.

What changed was a teenager from Hasselt. Max Verstappen made his Formula One debut at seventeen, won his first race at eighteen, and turned Dutch motorsport into something the country had not been since the days of Jacky Ickx and Tom Coronel - a national obsession. Tens of thousands of Dutch fans, dressed in orange, began travelling to every European race. By November 2018 Formula One Management was inviting Zandvoort to propose hosting a Grand Prix. A letter of intent was signed in March 2019; the deal was confirmed on 14 May. Track designer Jarno Zaffelli was brought in to bring Zandvoort up to current F1 standards. Turn 14, the final long sweeper now called the Arie Luyendijkbocht, was given an eighteen-degree banking. Turn 3, the Hugenholtzbocht, got a steeper nineteen degrees - twice the angle of Indianapolis. The 2020 Dutch Grand Prix was cancelled by the pandemic, but Formula One finally returned to Zandvoort on 5 September 2021. Max Verstappen won. Of course he did.

Zandvoort is 4.259 kilometres of asphalt threaded through real dunes, with an elevation difference of 8.9 metres and the North Sea visible to drivers as they crest the back section. The fast, blind apex at Scheivlak is one of the great corners in the sport - the kind of place where you commit early and find out late if you were right. Tarzanbocht still rewards different lines around its outside camber, and still produces overtakes. The track has been remade six times since 1948, each version a few metres different. Other famous corners are named for people the dunes once held: Slotemaker for the Dutch racer Rob Slotemaker, Hugenholtz for the first director, Luyendijk for the Dutch IndyCar driver. The lap record on the current layout is 1:11.097, set by Lewis Hamilton in 2021. The fastest official lap of any weekend is Oscar Piastri's 1:08.662 in qualifying for the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix. Beyond Formula One, the circuit hosts DTM, GT racing, historic Grand Prix weekends, and - since 2008 - a five-kilometre running race that loops the same asphalt the cars do.

The current Formula One partnership ends in 2026. After that, the contract is not renewed, and Zandvoort goes back to being what it was before Verstappen: a working motorsport circuit in the dunes, hosting historic weekends and touring car series and a 24-hour cycling race. The sponsor name on the gates says Mascot Circuit Zandvoort now, after a 2025 deal. The dunes will still be there. The corner the man with the vegetable garden insisted on will still be called Tarzan. The Dutch Grand Prix has come and gone from this stretch of coast twice before. It tends to come back.