Spa Francochamps Circuit

Motorsport race track near Spa, Belgium

Spa, Deep in the Ardennes

Spa Francorchamps began as a triangle of country roads in the Belgian Ardennes, and it still keeps the speed, the gradients and the moods of its younger self.

Spa Francorchamps lies in the forested Ardennes of Wallonia, about 8 km southeast of the town of Spa. In the early 1920s the owner of a Liège newspaper, looking for somewhere to race, chose a triangle of public roads joining Francorchamps, Malmedy and Stavelot, with long fast stretches, few tight corners and, at the foot of the valley, the Eau Rouge creek, which until 1920 had marked the border with Germany. A stream that once divided two countries now divides the brave from the merely quick. Grand Prix racing arrived in 1925, and Spa was on the calendar for the first championship season in 1950.

The old lap covered about 14 km of ordinary road lined with houses, trees and fields, and no road circuit in Europe was faster. Corners such as the Masta Kink, a high speed flick between farmhouses at the end of a long straight, were deeply feared. Both Chris Bristow and Alan Stacey lost their lives in the 1960 race, the drivers boycotted the 1969 event, and after 1970 Formula 1 stayed away. The original course had held 18 championship rounds.

In 1979 the circuit was trimmed to roughly 7 km, keeping part of the old road and adding a new link through the woods, and Formula 1 came back in 1983. From the La Source hairpin the cars plunge to the stream and are hurled uphill through Raidillon, a blind left right left over a crest, before running flat out to Les Combes, and the long Blanchimont sweep comes later. The weather is famously fickle, often dry on one side of the hill and wet on the other; the 14 car pileup in the rain of 1998 showed what that can mean. A redevelopment finished in 2022 added gravel and run off after serious accidents at Raidillon, among them the one in 2019 that killed the Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert.

Spa has now held 59 championship rounds, from Juan Manuel Fangio's win in 1950 to 2026. Jim Clark won four in succession from 1962 to 1965, Ayrton Senna won five, and Michael Schumacher's first victory came here in 1992, the start of a Spa tally of six, the most of anyone. In 2026 Kimi Antonelli won for Mercedes, a little over a century after the first Grand Prix in these woods, and the forest has yet to make the job any easier.

Every Grand Prix here

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