1973 MACH Heemstede race at Cruquius(re-mastered)

The last of my earliest 8mm films, the very beginning of r/c racing in Heemstede. The Model Auto Club Heemstede was just founded and we were given permission to use a small parking lot in front of temporary office building of road construction company Vermeer. Why there and why was this important for us, for the MACH, my brother Fons and myself?

START OF MACH, SERPENT AND AMB TIMING
It was very difficult to find suitable places to run our model cars. My 'little' brother Fons (yes AMB Timing/Mylaps...) had a schoolfriend Age who was mr. Piet Vermeer's son. So we had an entrance to Mr. Vermeer and he appreciated our enthusiasme so much that he was even willing to give us the key to the front door of the office so we could get electricity for the timekeeping and p.a. system. We raced there for 3 years and then moved to another parking lot in Heemstede, see the 1976 3-Hours of Heemstede video.

The contact with Mr. Vermeer was re-established when mr. Piet Vermeer became president of the soccer/football club where I happened to play as well. With the MACH we had developed a plan for a permanent track in Heemstede and the contact with Vermeer was such that they offered us to do the groundwork and lay the track for a very 'friendly' price. In 1982 the MACH track was built and the club could start to grow!

Remember Serpent was established end of 1979 and a 'state-of-the-art' permanent racing track was essential and extremely important to develop our Serpent cars. I don't think we could have played such an important role in the early years of r/c racing without this track being available to us for product development. And don't forget what it meant for AMB Timing and the development of the first transponder based timing system in the world (and very much still the only one, later Mylaps)! In the video you see the very first 'timing machine my brother Fons had built for the MACH, of course manually controlled with push-buttons. Fons lived still with my parents back then, only 18 years old, only one km away from the track. My other younger brother Cees was also involved in the MACH for running races.

I remember very well how ethusiastic we were about having permission to use this parking lot. Every weekend we built up the track with wooden boarding and tires, gathered wooden pallets for a step-up to the drivers stand on top of the green VW bus/truck. And after the race it had to be torn down again and taken back to my brother-in-law's place to store everything for the next race. That's how the MACH got started, that's how my brother Fons 7 years later got started with AMB Timing, and that's how I, 6 years later, got started with Serpent. And 20 years later, in 1993, I purchased a lot just 50m away from this parking lot to build the Serpent offices and factory...

Truly historic ground, wouldn't you say?


Enjoy this last 'historic r/c racing in Heemstede' document!