Who is the king of Spa?
Spa is the sort of track where it is said that, even today, the driver can make the difference. At seven kilometres in length – pre 1979 it was around double that length – Spa has always been considered as a sort of university of race driving as it features just about every challenge that one could wish for if designing the ideal race track, from slow to medium speed, to high speed corners, with climbs and drops and long straights. Therefore, winning at Spa is considered something special, by everyone working in the sport, the drivers themselves and with good reason, by the fans.
There have been 28 different winners of a round of the World Championship at this track and five could be in the running for the title of King of Spa, namely those who have won here at least four times. Three of them have won four Belgian Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton (2010, 2015, 2017 and 2020), Kimi Raikkonen (2004, 2005, 2007 and 2009) e Jim Clark (from 1962 to 1965). Hamilton and Raikkonen might both rue what might have been in 2008, when Felipe Massa was the eventual winner. The Englishman was first across the line, but later given a 25 second penalty for his move in passing Raikkonen when he cut the final chicane. As for the Finn, he could blame the rain which, with four laps remaining, sent him out of the race which he was comfortably leading at the time.
Ayrton Senna won five times, the first in 1985 with Lotus, before racking up four consecutive victories with McLaren from 1988 to 1991. The first of these five was maybe the most significant, in part because it is the only race in the history of Formula 1 that got postponed to a later date in the season. It should have been held in June, but the newly surfaced track started to break up right from free practice and the drivers protested it was too dangerous to continue, so it was found a new date in September, immediately after the round in Monza and before the one at Brands Hatch. It was Ayrton's second ever win after Estoril in April of the same year.
Leading the list of Spa winners on six is Michael Schumacher, whose career is inextricably linked to this track, starting with the fact he was born just 123 kilometres away from it in Hürth in Germany. He made his Formula 1 debut here in 1991 with Jordan and the following year, by now with Benetton, he took the first of his 91 wins and it was here again that he clinched his seventh and last world title in 2004. After that first win in 1992, he won again with Benetton in 1995 and then with Ferrari in 1996, 1997, 2001 and 2002.
Who knows, there might have been two further Belgian trophies in his cabinet: in 1994 he was disqualified because the wooden plank on the underside of the floor of his car had worn too much, so the car's ride height was not in line with the regulations. Then, in 1998, he was dominating proceedings in a torrential downpour when he ran into the back of David Coulthard's McLaren, which in one of the most controversial incidents of the season almost ended in a brawl between the two men in the pit lane. Who knows what might have happened in 2003 and 2006, when Ferrari had been competitive enough to win half the races (8 out of 16 in 2003 and 9 out of 18 in 2006) except that those were two years when Bernie Ecclestone was unable to reach a financial agreement with the promoter and the local authorities to stage the Belgian GP.
Fortunately, for the driver and fans, ever since 2007, the Ardennes venue has always featured on the calendar and let's hope it continues to do so as few race tracks offer such an exciting spectacle!
