As you'll have gathered I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days
at Spa-Francorchamps
. Like the 'ring, Brooklands, Monza (
where Matt was
), Reims, Le Mans and other old-school circuits there's just something bewitching about the place.
Masta Kink was 190mph+ back in the 1930s
I was watching the qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix the other week and had nodded off by the time Q3 had started. I just couldn't engage with it. The corners all looked the same, it was all so immaculate and though the race ended up exciting these newer tracks can never beat the history and soul of places like Spa.
I love the build-up of arriving somewhere like this too. As you roll down the hill into Francorchamps there are gantries over the road, geared up for controlling the race-day traffic. Signs count down the distance to the circuit. All the pubs and hotels have some sort of motorsport theme. This circuit is embedded in the local culture. Indeed, it is the local culture. I remember when I first came here in the early 2000s and the section from La Source to Blanchimont and the old Bus Stop Chicane was all open as public roads, sturdy gates sealing off the rest of the track. Seems mad that someone popping from Stavelot to Francorchamps for a pint of milk could, until recently, have taken in Blanchimont as part of the route.
Banked corner took racers from Stavelot road
In a break on the second day I took a little drive out of the circuit to follow the route of the old lap. To most people it's probably just a sweeping stretch of road through the Ardennes farmland. But if you've read tales of triumph and tragedy the ability to complete probably three quarters of the classic Spa lap without even going through the gates of the modern complex is fabulously evocative. Bimbling along in the Lotus the idea of doing the same at three times the speed in one of Colin Chapman's minimalist aluminium bathtubs or even a thundering 30s Silver Arrow just boggles the brain. I filmed a lap with the GoPro which you can
watch here
here in real-time
if you prefer. The scary thing is the speeded up one probably isn't far off a representation of the kind of pace Henri Pescarolo was doing when he set the all-out lap record of 3min 13sec in a Matra 670b in 1973. At an average - average - speed of 164mph.
The sweeping downhill run from Les Combes
If you are lucky enough to drive the track in its modern guise you're in for the real treat. Sanitised - relatively - there's still a sense of speed you rarely get on other circuits. Skimming the wall past the old pits at 100mph-plus and gathering your willpower for the seemingly vertical wall of tarmac at Eau Rouge is one petrolhead rite of passage that doesn't disappoint. If you nailed the line in the Elise that brief moment of weightless, dead-ahead steering between the fully loaded right into blind left would coincide with cresting the summit in a beautifully harmonious sequence. Half a second either way or a kerb width off line and the experience was a lot less comfortable... And after that you still had Pouhon and Blanchimont go come! If you haven't been there already you need to add it to the bucket list.
Just make sure you leave some time to retrace the steps of the track as it was when the real heroes were racing here back in the day. And drop into the museum at Stavelot while you're at it.
A lap of the old Spa circuit
(possibly speeded up - real-time
here