Heusinkveld

Born in Zandvoort, Lammers grew up washing cars at a nearby school for advanced and anti-skid driving skills training. This school was run by Dutch touring-car legend Rob Slotemaker. Encouraged by Slotemaker, Lammers was hired to teach drivers on a private, closed track how to safely recover a car from a skid situation. Slotemaker set him up in a Simca Rallye 2 for the Group 1 production car class in the 1973 Dutch Touring Car Championship. At 16 years of age, Lammers won his first-ever car race and continued to take the season title in his rookie year. He became the youngest Dutch national auto racing champion in history. Two more years in the Simca followed, with Lammers taking four more wins in 1974. In 1976, he switched to an Opel Dealer Team Holland-run Opel Kadett GT/E to take his second Dutch title.

Dovetailing his 1976 touring-car campaign with a first season in Formula Ford, Lammers quickly realized his future was in single-seaters. Driving a Crosslé in the Benelux, German, and European Championship, he grabbed pole position at his first race. He won at the Jyllandring and Mengen and shone in the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch.

Stepping up with Hawke to Formula 3 in 1977 proved to be a false dawn. For 1978, he switched to the Racing Team Holland outfit run by Alan Docking. This led to Lammers winning the 1978 European Formula 3 Championship after a close battle with Swede Anders Olofsson. He beat rivals such as Alain Prost, Nelson Piquet, and Nigel Mansell. Lammers remains the only Dutch driver to have won this championship. Having received an offer from the works March Formula 2 team, Lammers decided to jump the category to go straight into Formula One with Shadow in 1979.

Lammers spent four seasons in Formula One, racing largely uncompetitive machinery and failing to score a World Championship point in any of his 41 appearances. In 1979, Lammers and fellow rookie Elio de Angelis joined Shadow. Lammers' best result was a ninth place in the Canadian GP. He then signed for the German-owned ATS team. He immediately qualified fourth on the grid at Long Beach but the car broke on the opening lap. When Marc Surer made a return to ATS, Lammers moved to Ensign.

For 1981, Lammers rejoined ATS and performed well in the non-championship South African GP at Kyalami. In 1982, Lammers switched to Theodore. At Monaco, Lammers' TY02 had to stay on nude rims for a day because the team did not have any tyres. Lammers was approached by Ferrari to replace Gilles Villeneuve from Zandvoort on. However, the Theodore's throttle stuck during the session, causing Lammers to hit the wall and break his thumb. As a result, Patrick Tambay signed the Ferrari contract. At Zandvoort, Lammers took part in his last Grand Prix before Tommy Byrne took over the seat.

In 1992, Lammers made a surprise Formula One comeback when he stepped in at March for the final two races of the season. This was a full ten years after his initial final Grand Prix, a record career gap in Formula One. Replacing Karl Wendlinger, Lammers lapped sixth fastest in wet free practice at Suzuka, before retiring from the race with a broken gearbox. At Adelaide, he finished 12th.

Lammers decided to switch to sportscar racing where he became a mainstay for the next three decades, both as a driver and a team owner. His time in Group C includes seasons with Richard Lloyd Racing's private Porsche 956, the works Jaguar team, and the works Toyota team. In 1983, Lammers joined top Porsche privateer Richard Lloyd Racing, taking several podium finishes and finishing sixth on his Le Mans debut. In 1984, he was paired with Jonathan Palmer, and the Canon-liveried 956 took victory over the works cars at Brands Hatch.

A mid-season switch saw Lammers snapped up by Tom Walkinshaw at TWR Jaguar. On his debut for the team at Shah Alam in Malaysia, he brought home the Jag in second place. In the 1986 Daytona 24 Hours, driving the BF Goodrich Porsche 962, he was heading for victory when his brakes failed. In 1987, Lammers joined TWR Jaguar as a proper works driver, teamed with Grand Prix veteran John Watson. They won at Jarama, Monza, and Fuji.

1988 became Lammers' most successful season in Group C racing. Paired with ex-Lotus Formula One driver Johnny Dumfries, they finished second at Spa and third at Brno. They were joined by Andy Wallace at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Lammers drove for 13 hours to be the anchor in a popular win for TWR Jaguar, the first for the marque since 1957. For this, he was congratulated by Queen Elizabeth II and rewarded with the title of Honorary Member of the BRDC. In IMSA, Lammers was part of the crew that won the Daytona 24 Hours. With regular teammate Davy Jones, Lammers won at Del Mar.

In 1989, the Jaguars were outclassed by the resurgent Mercedes effort. Lammers was more successful in the US, winning in Portland and Del Mar. The following year, Lammers won the Daytona 24 Hours again, this time paired with Andy Wallace and Davy Jones. Switching to Toyota, Lammers won the 1992 Japanese Sportscar Championship.

Lammers embarked on a new era of sportscar success in 2001 when he rekindled his ties with Japanese manufacturer Dome to race their Judd-engined S101. He entered it in the new FIA Sportscar Championship and the Le Mans 24 Hours with Val Hillebrand as his teammate. Lammers and Hillebrand won the 2002 title in the leading SR1 class, before doubling up in 2003. When the FIA Sportscar Championship collapsed after 2003, the Dome continued at Le Mans. Lammers took seventh in 2004 along with Elton Julian and John Bosch. In 2017, Lammers signed up for a three-year spell with Racing Team Nederland, funded by Frits van Eerd.

Lammers has acted as the team principal of his own team on three very different occasions. Between 1989 and 1991, Lammers ran his Opel Dealerteam Holland-supported Vitaal Racing outfit in Formula Opel Lotus. In his first year, he joined forces with Peter Kox, and together they won the EFDA Opel Lotus Euroseries.

Setting up Racing for Holland at the start of the 21st century proved to be the birth of Lammers' final period of sportscar success at the highest level. With their Dome-Judd S101, Racing for Holland took two consecutive titles in the FIA Sportscar Championship in 2002 and 2003. The team was the seatholder for the Netherlands in the A1 Grand Prix series that ran between 2005 and 2009. Lammers started off with Jos Verstappen as his driver, who took victory at Durban in the opening 2005–06 season.

After his decision to go into full retirement after the 2019 season, Lammers quickly assumed another duty. He became sporting director of the organization founded to revive the Dutch GP at Zandvoort. Starting in 2020, Lammers was more than just an ambassador for the event. After a Covid-induced postponement in 2020, the Dutch dream was finally realized in 2021, when the first Dutch GP since 1985 was staged.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.