Belgian Grand Prix

Since its inception, Spa-Francorchamps has been known for its unpredictable weather. At one stage it had rained at the Belgian Grand Prix for twenty years in a row, and drivers frequently confront a part of the course that is clear and bright while another stretch is rainy and slippery.

The Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps was built in 1921 but until 1924 was used only for motorcycle racing. After the 1923 success of the new 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, a similar 24-hour endurance race — the Spa 24 Hours — was run at the Spa track. In 1925 the first Belgian Grand Prix was held at the very fast, 9-mile circuit located in the Ardennes region of eastern Belgium, about half an hour from Liège. The race was won by the Italian works Alfa driver Antonio Ascari, whose son Alberto would win the race in 1952 and 1953. After winning the Belgian race, Antonio Ascari was killed in his next race at the 1925 French Grand Prix.

The Grand Prix did not return until 1930, by which time the circuit had been modified to bypass the Malmedy chicane; the race was won by Louis Chiron. In 1931 the Grand Prix had become something of an endurance race, won by Briton William Grover-Williams and Caberto Conelli. Tazio Nuvolari won in 1933, and Rudolf Caracciola won in 1935 in a Mercedes, by which time the circuit had re-installed the Malmedy chicane.

The 1939 race saw the birth of the Raidillon corner, a bypass of the Ancienne Douane section. Contrary to popular belief, only the small kink to the left at the bottom of the drop is named Eau Rouge, which leads directly into Raidillon, a very long right uphill corner; the tricky blind left at the top has no name. Conditions were dreadful and the race was marred by the death of British driver Richard "Dick" Seaman while leading. Going into Clubhouse corner, Seaman skidded off the rain-soaked road, hit a tree, and his Mercedes caught fire; he received life-threatening burns and succumbed to his injuries later in hospital. The race was won by Seaman's teammate Hermann Lang.

World War II broke out and the Belgian Grand Prix did not return until June 1946, when the 2-to-4.5-litre race at the Bois de la Cambre public park in Brussels was won by Frenchman Eugène Chaboud in a Delage.

Spa was modified to make it even faster, shortened to 8.7 miles (14.1 km). All of the slow corners were taken out — the Stavelot hairpin was bypassed and made into a fast banked corner, and the Malmedy chicane was also bypassed — so that every corner except La Source was ultra-high speed. Spa became known as one of the most extreme, challenging and fearsome circuits in motorsport history.

1950 saw the introduction of the Formula One World Championship; the race was dominated by the Alfa Romeos of Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio and Italian Nino Farina. Fangio won, and Farina won the following year in his works Alfa after Fangio dropped back with hub problems. In 1953 Alberto Ascari dominated in his Ferrari while the Maseratis fell apart. Mercedes dominated in 1955, with Fangio taking victory ahead of his British teammate Stirling Moss. The 1956 race was wet: Moss led in a Maserati but lost a wheel at Raidillon and rejoined in teammate Cesare Perdisa's car to finish third; the gearbox in Fangio's Ferrari broke, and his teammate Peter Collins won.

The 1957 race was cancelled because there was no money for it to be held, owing to the extreme prices of fuel in Belgium and the Netherlands caused by the Suez Crisis. In 1958 Spa was upgraded with new facilities, a resurfaced track, and a wider pit straight, but it had gained a reputation as a totally unforgiving and mentally challenging circuit. Most racing events there had smaller-than-average fields because a number of drivers feared the circuit. There were no radios in the days of the old Spa circuit, so drivers had no idea of conditions and could encounter rain without warning; cars spinning off could hit telegraph poles, houses, stone walls, embankments or trees, and many drivers were killed or seriously injured at Spa during the 1950s. The 1958 race was won by Briton Tony Brooks in a Vanwall, ahead of teammate Moss.

The race was not run in 1959, but 1960 was one of the darkest weekends in Formula One history. New British independent teams such as Cooper and Lotus had pioneered the rear-mid-engined car, considerably lighter, faster and easier to drive than its front-engined predecessors; these cars had not been driven at Spa before. During practice, Stirling Moss, in a privately entered Lotus, had a wheel come off at the Burnenville right-hander and was thrown out, breaking both legs, three vertebrae and several ribs; he survived but did not race for most of that year. Briton Mike Taylor suffered a steering failure in another Lotus and crashed into trees near Stavelot, ending his racing career; he later successfully sued Lotus founder Colin Chapman in a British court for the sale of faulty machinery.

The race itself was even more disastrous. On lap 17, Briton Chris Bristow, driving a Cooper, was fighting for sixth with Belgian Willy Mairesse; they touched wheels, Bristow lost control at Malmedy, overturned, and was decapitated by barbed-wire fencing, killing him instantly. Five laps later, 26-year-old Briton Alan Stacey, running sixth in a works Lotus, was hit in the face by a bird on the Masta straight, lost control at 140 mph (228 km/h), flew off an embankment and was killed when his car exploded on impact. Australian Jack Brabham won the race, and Jim Clark scored his first Formula One points by finishing fifth — but Clark, like a number of other drivers, developed an intense dislike for the circuit. It was the worst Formula One event in terms of fatalities until the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Ferrari romped home 1–2–3–4 in 1961, with Phil Hill winning. Clark won his first race in 1962 and went on to win the next three Belgian Grands Prix; the 1963 race was rain-soaked, with Clark finishing 4.5 minutes ahead of second-placed Bruce McLaren. The 1966 race, run under new 3-litre regulations, was again rain-soaked: a heavy rainstorm caused seven drivers to hydroplane off at Burnenville on the first lap, and Briton Jackie Stewart had a high-speed accident at the Masta Kink, ending up trapped in his BRM for nearly 30 minutes while ruptured fuel tanks soaked him with fuel. His teammate Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant freed him using spanners borrowed from a spectator. Stewart's crash inspired his subsequent crusade for safety at racetracks. Briton John Surtees won the race in a Ferrari, ahead of Austrian Jochen Rindt in a Cooper.

In 1967, American Dan Gurney won in his Eagle after Clark had mechanical problems — it was to be Eagle's only F1 victory. Briton Mike Parkes crashed heavily at 150 mph at Blanchimont, was thrown from his works Ferrari and received serious leg and head injuries; he survived but never raced in Formula One again. The 1968 race saw wings introduced for the first time in Formula One, influenced by American Jim Hall's Chaparral sports cars. McLaren won their first victory as a constructor, with founder Bruce McLaren winning, but Briton Brian Redman crashed his works Cooper into a parked Ford Cortina at Burnenville, was seriously burned and broke his right arm.

With average lap speeds past 150 mph (240 km/h) and the circuit still having virtually no safety features, the 1969 race was cancelled in early April after the British, French and Italian teams withdrew when the track owners would not pay for safety improvements demanded by Jackie Stewart on behalf of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association. The exclusion was not popular with the press, particularly British journalist Denis Jenkinson. One last race was held there in 1970, with barriers and a temporary chicane at Malmedy, won by Mexican Pedro Rodríguez in a BRM, with New Zealander Chris Amon finishing 1.1 seconds behind in a March. Spa was still too fast and too dangerous, and in 1971 the Belgian Grand Prix was cancelled as the track was not up to FIA-mandated safety specifications. The event was then relocated.

Following that decision, the Belgians alternated their Grand Prix between Zolder in northern Belgium and a circuit at Nivelles-Baulers near Brussels. The first race at Nivelles in 1972 was won by Emerson Fittipaldi. Zolder hosted the race in 1973, won by Jackie Stewart. Formula One returned to Nivelles in 1974, again won by Fittipaldi, but the circuit was unpopular and the organizers were unable to sustain a Grand Prix there afterwards.

The Belgian Grand Prix was held at Zolder a further nine times. Niki Lauda scored back-to-back victories there in 1975 and 1976; Gunnar Nilsson scored his only F1 victory at Zolder in 1977; Mario Andretti dominated the 1978 race for Lotus, driving the 79 in its debut; Jody Scheckter won in 1979 in his Ferrari; and Didier Pironi became a first-time winner in 1980 in his Ligier.

The 1981 meeting was a chaotic event amid the FISA–FOCA war and the poor condition of the Zolder circuit. During Friday practice, Osella mechanic Giovanni Amadeo was run over in the pitlane by Carlos Reutemann and died of his injuries the day after the race. On race day a drivers' strike delayed the start; then a starting-grid accident occurred when Riccardo Patrese stalled his Arrows and his mechanic Dave Luckett, on the circuit attempting to start the car, was struck when teammate Siegfried Stohr hit the back of Patrese's car. Luckett survived; the race was restarted and won by Reutemann. Gilles Villeneuve died during practice at Zolder in 1982 after a collision with West German Jochen Mass going into the fast Butte corner; his Ferrari flipped a number of times and he was thrown from the car. John Watson won the race for McLaren.

Spa-Francorchamps had been shortened to 4.3 mi (7 km) in 1979; the sections sweeping past towns and other obstructions were cut out and replaced with a new series of corners before the Les Combes left-hander, rejoining the old track on the straight up to Blanchimont. The first race at the shortened circuit was won by Frenchman Alain Prost, and the circuit was an immediate hit with drivers, teams and fans. The Belgian Grand Prix returned to Zolder in 1984 for the last time, with Italian Michele Alboreto winning in a Ferrari.

The 1985 event was postponed when a newly laid asphalt broke up in hot weather, and was moved from early June to mid-September; Brazilian Ayrton Senna took the first of his five Belgian Grands Prix in a wet/dry race driving a Lotus. Nigel Mansell dominated in 1986, and he and Senna took each other out the following year. Senna won the next four Belgian Grands Prix, the first two rain-soaked. The 1988 event was the first to be held in late August/early September, a slot it has kept ever since (excluding the rescheduled 1985 event). The 1990 event was restarted twice after accidents at La Source and Eau Rouge. In 1992 German Michael Schumacher won the first of his 91 Grand Prix victories in a Benetton, a year after making his Formula 1 debut at the circuit. Damon Hill won the 1993 event after battling Senna and Schumacher.

A chicane was installed at the bottom of Eau Rouge in 1994 in response to the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola that year; it was gone by 1995, and Schumacher won that year and the next two. The 1998 event ran in torrential conditions: the race was stopped after a first-corner accident involving thirteen of the twenty-two runners, and after the restart Schumacher ran into the back of David Coulthard in low visibility, then stormed into the McLaren garage to confront him. Only eight drivers were classified, and Damon Hill secured a victory ahead of teammate Ralf Schumacher to record the Jordan team's first Formula One win.

Schumacher won his 52nd Grand Prix at Spa in 2001, surpassing Alain Prost's all-time record of 51 wins, and won his seventh World Drivers' Championship title there in 2004. There was no Belgian Grand Prix in 2003 because of the country's tobacco-advertising laws, and the FIA dropped it from the 2006 calendar because local authorities could not complete major repair work in time. The race returned in 2007, when Kimi Räikkönen took pole and his third Belgian Grand Prix win in a row.

In 2008, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton survived a frantic, rain-hit finish to pass Räikkönen for the lead, but the stewards applied a 25-second penalty for cutting a corner at the Bus Stop chicane, dropping him to third behind Felipe Massa and Nick Heidfeld; McLaren's appeal was turned down, and the decision was criticised by Niki Lauda as "completely wrong". The 2021 race became the shortest Formula One World Championship race in history and the only one with no running under full green-flag conditions: two laps were completed behind the safety car before the race was red-flagged on lap 3 and not restarted owing to adverse weather, with the classification counted back to the end of lap 1. Max Verstappen was classified first, George Russell second and Hamilton third, with half points awarded; the resulting controversy led Formula One and the FIA to change the points structure for shortened races ahead of 2022. The 2022 race was won by Verstappen from 14th, the second-lowest position the race has been won from after Schumacher from 16th in 1995. In January 2025 the race's contract was extended to host a Grand Prix on a rotational basis in four of the next six seasons, with races in 2026, 2027, 2029 and 2031; from 2027 to 2032 the Grand Prix would alternate with the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

Michael Schumacher won the Belgian Grand Prix six times. Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton won five times each — Senna four consecutively from 1988 to 1991. Kimi Räikkönen and Jim Clark won four times each, Clark also four in a row from 1962 to 1965.

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.