Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps

Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps sits at Francorchamps, in the commune of Stavelot, in Belgium's Ardennes forest, built on the triangle of public roads linking Francorchamps, Malmedy and Stavelot long before it was a racetrack. The current Grand Prix layout runs 7.004 kilometres over 19 turns, clockwise, with roughly 102 metres of elevation change from the highest point of the lap to the lowest — among the most dramatic swings on the championship calendar, and part of why weather can differ from one end of the circuit to the other, sun at Les Combes and rain through Pouhon on the same lap.

Eau Rouge into Raidillon is the corner every driver measures themselves against: a steep, uphill left-right-left sweep with a blind summit and a gradient of around 17%, taken flat by the bravest in the fastest cars. Later in the lap, Blanchimont is taken flat-out at full speed; Pouhon is a fast downhill double-left; and Les Combes, the fast right-left complex at the top of the hill after Kemmel Straight, is one of the circuit's main overtaking points.

Threaded through the Ardennes forest since 1921, Spa-Francorchamps is, by near-universal agreement, the greatest circuit on earth. Eau Rouge into Raidillon is the most famous sequence of corners in the sport — seven kilometres of elevation, weather and history that turns on a dime. No global championship is complete without it.

A weekend in the Ardennes: F1 pit-lane garages, a château table, and Eau Rouge in the morning mist before the crowds arrive.

Spa-Francorchamps was laid out in 1921 on a long triangle of Ardennes public roads; motorcycles raced there first, the first car race followed in 1922, and the circuit hosted its first Grand Prix in 1925. It has run the Belgian Grand Prix intermittently ever since, and has been the race's regular home since 1985. It has hosted the 24 Hours of Spa — one of endurance racing's great classics — since 1924, alongside the FIA World Endurance Championship's 6 Hours of Spa. Few circuits anywhere carry the same weight of history through the same forest, on roughly the same roads, more than a century on.

Official circuit website →