Eau Rouge on two wheels… and sometime one: racing the motorcycle Spa 24 Hours

Most grand prix motorcycle riders who competed at Spa-Francorchamps agreed that it was the greatest racetrack of them all, even though many breathed a sigh of relief when it was removed from the world championship calendar in 1991 because it was considered too dangerous for top-class racing.

Spa was once the deadliest GP venue of them all, riders joking darkly, “There are so many memorials around Spa, they could make a fence out of them.”

Spa’s corners are majestic in scale, legendary in reputation. And none more so than Raidillon de l’Eau Rouge – a 110mph left/right/left, downhill/uphill roller-coaster that makes Laguna Seca’s Corkscrew look like something off a kiddie’s Scalextric track.

I rode six Spa 24 Hours between 1984 and 1990, twice finishing second, so I must have attacked Eau Rouge around a thousand times, day and night. Raidillon de l’Eau Rouge was the highlight of every lap, because the sequence is so unusual that it demanded a particular and inch-perfect approach. It was also a lot of fun.

You accelerate out of La Source hairpin, taking a wide line through the subsequent right-handed kink, so you end up riding towards the trackside wall on the right. When I raced at Spa, this was the start/finish straight, where the pitwall was topped by lap scorers and their pitboards. The fun to be had here was getting as close as you dared to their feet, hitting around 150mph, before you peeled left into the first part of the left/right/left.

The left-hander is the not-so-important corner, so you’re fully focused on the right. That’s why you hang off the right of the motorcycle as soon as you veer left, away from the pitwall. Thus you make an awkward sight as you stroke the brakes and hurtle into the left-hander, but it all makes sense when you flick right to climb Raidillon.

At this point you reach Spa’s lowest point, over the Eau Rouge stream, where the compression is so violent that your stomach wants to go through your backside. At the same time, the asphalt in front of you looks like a vast wall towering over you, which you start climbing, hard on the throttle, using the grip afforded by the massive positive camber.

The good times aren’t over yet. If you’ve come up Raidillon fast enough, your front wheel will leave the road when you reach the crest, where the track goes left. By this time you’re doing maybe 120mph, trying to turn the bike from right to left with the front wheel in the air.

This is all anticipation and prediction, because you’ve done it so many times before, but get it wrong and things may get messy.

Raidillon de l’Eau Rouge isn’t only a joy, it’s also vitally important to the lap time. Get through there fast and you carry that extra speed all the way down the 0.7-mile Kemmel Straight. If there’s a racetrack in heaven, it has to be Spa-Francorchamps.