The last king of old Spa: Pedro Rodríguez's unforgettable 1970 win

F1

Pedro Rodríguez delivered one of F1's most legendary drives at the old Spa in 1970, taming one of the world's fastest circuits to claim his second GP win after a relentless duel with Chris Amon

Pedro Rodriguez, BRM P153 during the Belgian GP

Pedro Rodríguez on his way to a final F1 win

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Author

Matt Bishop

If you were to ask every current Formula 1 driver to name his favourite circuit, most of them would reply with a three-letter word: “Spa.” Some might mention Suzuka, Interlagos, or even Monaco, but Spa would top the poll. However, the version of the circuit on which they will race at the end of next month, which runs to 4.352 miles (7.004km), came into being as comparatively recently as 1983. Motor Sport’s Denis ‘DSJ’ Jenkinson described it then as “a challenging new circuit”, but I am told that other journalists could be heard muttering the term “pale shadow” to compare the new Spa to the old Spa.

In the years leading up to 1983, the Belgian Grand Prix had been held at Zolder (not a bad racetrack at all, although it will always be associated with the death of Gilles Villeneuve in 1982) and Nivelles (a flat and featureless circuit that has since been demolished and replaced by an industrial estate). But, before Nivelles and Zolder, the race had been staged at the original Spa, which ran to 8.761 miles (14.099km) and, with a respectful nod to Nürburgring Nordschleife, was perhaps the greatest circuit on which world championship-status Formula 1 grands prix have ever been run.

It was last used for that purpose on June 7, 1970 – almost exactly 55 years ago therefore – and a quick glance at a layout map reveals that it was an extraordinarily high-speed circuit. It contained just one slow corner – the same La Source as exists today – but the rest of it was all long, fast, sweeping turns linked by straights that were flat-out but not quite straight.

You can still drive parts of it, for some of it was made up of public roads. In 2015 Kevin Magnussen and I explored it together in a quick road car, a Honda Civic Type-R, when he was McLaren‘s reserve driver and I was the team’s comms/PR chief, and he tackled those notoriously formidable curves – how can I phrase this decorously? – with fabulous commitment and glorious abandon. It was a privilege and a joy to sit next to him as he did so. We then stopped at the friterie (French) or frietkot (Flemish) beside the Masta Kink to guzzle chips with mayo, which is a bucket-list thing for all racing devotees to do one day.

Graham Hill, Lotus 49C Ford leads John Miles, Lotus 72B Ford during the Belgian GP

Spa looked very different in 1970

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How quick was the old Spa, and how scary therefore? Very and very. In 1970 the F1 cars that were raced there were powered by V8s, V12s and flat-12s good for 440 to 460bhp. OK, F1 cars were dinky and light back then, most of them weighing little more than 500kg, which made them decidedly nippy. But they were not super-fast by today’s standards. For example, I remember that in 2014 we (McLaren) organised for a group of owners and prospective buyers of our road cars to visit Spa, where they would be driven around the circuit by Emerson Fittipaldi, who had become McLaren’s first F1 drivers’ world champion 40 years before. The car we provided for that purpose was a McLaren P1, the company’s then newest and fastest hypercar, a 903bhp/1395kg machine whose maximum speed was 217mph (349km/h).

Because Fittipaldi’s F1 career had begun in 1970 and had ended in 1980, during which decade the Belgian Grand Prix had been held at Nivelles and Zolder, he had never driven a single lap of Spa before, for he had made his F1 grand prix debut in the 1970 British Grand Prix, consequently missing the last F1 grand prix to be run at Spa in that era, which had taken place the month before. “But, to be honest, even if I had raced at Spa in 1970,” he said in 2014, “this McLaren P1 is definitely quicker in every way than the Lotus 49C F1 car that I was racing at that time, no question about it.”

So, bearing all that in mind, and remembering that the F1 cars that contested the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix were powered by engines that pumped out about half as much power as the McLaren P1 road car’s 900bhp-plus, and that their top speeds were about 185mph (298km/h) rather than around 20 per cent more than that, Jackie Stewart‘s 3m28.0sec pole lap in a March 701, in which he averaged 151.6mph (243.9km/h) on a circuit that included a very slow corner (the aforementioned La Source, which was a first-gear turn in 1970), was pretty hot stuff. Indeed, his closest challenger, his friend Jochen Rindt, had qualified his Lotus 49C second, his fastest quali-lap a gargantuan 2.1sec slower than Stewart’s scintillating best.

From the archive

But Jackie had not enjoyed himself. “In current terms the circuit is antiquated,” he said afterwards. “There are a lot of defects in the bends, at Masta for example, where guardrails should be added. You can be sure that, even if some drivers say they take it at full speed, no-one actually dares to do so. It’s a fast and dangerous circuit, and we therefore treat it with respect.” But JYS would neither win nor star in the race the next day, and even his prodigious speed and mettlesome courage would be eclipsed by those who did.

Race day dawned clear and dry, and it was Chris Amon who took the lead at the start, forcing his March 701 from its P3 grid slot ahead of Stewart’s March and Rindt’s Lotus. But soon a new challenger entered the fray. From sixth on the grid Pedro Rodríguez had begun a charge, and by lap four he had scythed his BRM P153 up to second place. By lap five he was on Amon’s tail, and by lap six he had taken the lead. He celebrated by blitzing his next lap in 3min 30.8sec (an average of 149.5mph [240.6km/h]).

Rodríguez had won an F1 grand prix before, but only one, in a Cooper-Maserati, at Kyalami in 1967. Amon had never won one, but he fancied his chances at Spa in 1970. Their battle was relentless and intense. The two men exchanged positions several times, and, as they began their 28th and final lap, Rodríguez was a smidgen more than three seconds ahead. But Amon was not done yet, and the old Spa lap was a long one.

Chris Amon (NZL) Ferrari second; Pedro Rodriguez (MEX) BRM winner; Jean-Pierre Beltoise (FRA) Matra third.

The Spa win was one of Rodríguez’s two F1 victories

Over that last 8.761 miles (14.099km) he hurled his little Cosworth V8-engined March after the gruntier V12-powered BRM, gaining with every turn – and taking the Masta Kink flat, and damn the consequences, whatever JYS said later – but by flag-fall he was still 1.1sec behind. Nonetheless, he had posted the race’s fastest lap, stopping the watches after only 3min27.4sec had elapsed, which was six tenths faster even than Stewart’s brilliant pole lap the day before and worked out at an average speed of 152.0mph (244.6km/h).

Rodríguez would not win a world championship-status F1 grand prix again, and Amon famously never did. But on fast and challenging circuits they were both often mesmerisingly good. Rodríguez was an old Spa specialist in fact – and, sure enough, other than an attrition-aided second place at Watkins Glen at the end of the year, he would rarely trouble the F1 scorers again in 1970.

From the archive

In sports cars, however, he was regarded as one of the greats. That description meant more 50 years ago than it means today, for it may confound younger readers to learn that sports cars were faster than F1 cars in the early 1970s. Just three weeks before the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix, for example, Rodríguez had entered the Spa 1000km in a Porsche 917K – the sports car nonpareil of that era. He had bagged the pole with that monster of a car by lapping the great circuit in 3min 19.8sec (157.9mph [254.1km/h]). In the race he had bettered that, hurling that superfast Porsche around that daunting circuit in 3min 16.5sec (160.5mph [258.3km/h]). However, to be fair, the sports car drivers were allowed to straight-line the F1 chicane/kink at Malmedy.

Who knows what Rodríguez might have achieved, in sports cars and/or F1 cars, had he not been killed at Norisring in July 1971, aged 31? Perhaps he would have continued to lower the lap record at the old Spa in sports cars for a few more years. We will never know. What we do know is that the old Spa lap record is held and will always now be held not by Rodríguez but by another sports car legend who loved the place, Henri Pescarolo, who lapped it in 3min13.4sec in his Matra MS670B during the 1973 Spa 1000km, which works out at an average speed of 163.090mph (262.461km/h). Now, that is seriously fast. Indeed, ovals apart, 52 years later, it is still the fastest lap ever driven on a road circuit.

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