It was all very normal for Jaap Timmer’s daughter. “We (Sophie and her brother Geertjan, ed.) Woked around the riders’ quarter and believed it.” Timmer does realize what her father means for the sport.
“He was intelligent, but could also tap jokes. I don’t just say that,” she says. “Just ask volunteers and officials. He also raised with them.” Jaap Timmer is just as good standing among the bobos as between the ‘normal’ people. “And he was afraid of anyone.”
According to Timmer, her father watched to be completely eliminated. “We were once on Imola, then we saw an old man passing by that had done a lot for motorsport. My father said:” I don’t want to be that, such a dinosaur who shuffles and knows everything better, but doesn’t have to worry about anything. “
The only thing that Jaap Timmer did not manage is to realize a TT Museum. Something that daughter Sophie still finds a shame. “It is now 2025 and there is no museum yet. The TT deserves that, especially if you are a hundred years old. My father worked on it, but when he died that stopped.”
Jaap Timmer worked day and night in his life. He died in 2017 at the age of 77, but had actually been on it for at least 100 years. “The time he has squeezed in his life, you have to be able to do that. If I work at night because something has to be finished, I think: I am just my father. Or I just have to organize my time differently,” she laughs. “My father was a nice man, I’m glad he was my father.”