HOBBS: The Challenge of Spa

Formula 1

HOBBS: The Challenge of Spa

SPEED’s F1 analyst describes the Spa-Francorchamps that he knew, and remembers some great Belgian hospitality….

David Hobbs | Posted September 05, 2008 Charlotte, N.C.

Whether in an F1 car or like here, in a Ford GT40, Hobbs found Spa an epic challenge. (LAT archive photo)

I never won a race at Spa. I can’t remember how many I did, but I raced on all configurations of the track.

The first time I raced there was in 1967, when I drove a Ford GT40 for a guy called Skip Scott, and my co-driver was Jochen Neerpasch – later to be a mentor to Michael Schumacher. That was the old 9.5-mile circuit that followed roughly the same course as the current start-finish area, through La Source and Eau Rouge, but of course then it was tighter and had virtually no runoff area, especially at the top. Whereas now you have 50 yards of runoff room on the right, in the old days as you exited the corner, the guardrail was right at the edge of the tarmac, behind which was a massive drop downhill.

You carried on up Kemmel straight, and when you got to Les Combes, instead of turning right as it does now, it went over the top of a crest through an S-bend, and then you zoomed off toward Burneville, which was a very wide open right-hand corner. The only problem was that a steep hill came down to the left side of the track, which ended at the road edge, and on the right-hand side was a very small sidewalk and then about a six-foot drop to a bunch of houses. People used to sit on that sidewalk right by the track in their deck chairs, watching us go by!

As you exited Burneville, which in a GT40 was about 135mph, you had a lonnnnng downhill run to the village of Masta, and in the middle of the village was a left-right flick, known simply as the Masta Kink, and the big thing in F1 was to try and take it flat. Even with only about 380hp in the GT40, it still topped 200mph on the approach, so the kink was not flat in that car.

To make matters worse on the exit of the corner, the outside of the track was marked by a bloody great concrete light pole, against which they leaned a straw bale – which counted as a big safety feature then! Jackie Stewart had his infamous shunt coming out of the Masta Kink in 1966, when the fuel tank split and bathed him in petrol up to his chest. A farmer came along to try and help him out, who was smoking a cigarette! From then on, Jackie was very safety conscious about his racing.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Hobbs

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