{"id":2638,"date":"2012-08-30T13:09:58","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T12:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/history\/the-fight-to-be-fastest\/"},"modified":"2019-09-19T08:06:37","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T07:06:37","slug":"fight-be-fastest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/articles\/single-seaters\/f1\/fight-be-fastest\/","title":{"rendered":"The fight to be fastest"},"content":{"rendered":"
The sympathetically reconstructed Spa-Francorchamps circuit is quick \u2013 Mark Webber\u2019s fastest race lap of 2011 was set at 142.6mph \u2013 but it\u2019s not as quick as its \u2018daddy\u2019 used to be.<\/p>\n
There was a time when tracks \u2013 and I\u2019m talking trees-and\/or-houses road circuits, not banked ovals like Brooklands\u2019 Outer Circuit, and not there-and-back blinds like Berlin\u2019s AVUS \u2013 cared not a jot for safety nor health and instead blatantly vied to be the outright quickest.<\/p>\n
The original Spa, you might be surprised to read, wasn\u2019t really at the races in this respect. So it took drastic action. Back then \u2018Eau Rouge\u2019 was hardly white-knuckle. Two 90-degree lefts connected by a hairpin right, it was lumbered with a tardy nomenclature too: Virage de l\u2019Ancienne Douanne. Ooh, feel the speed. It was sufficiently slow for Rudolf Caracciola, on his way to winning the 1935 Belgian Grand Prix for Mercedes-Benz, to smell a spectator\u2019s wisping cigar smoke.<\/p>\n
That changed in 1939 when a radically reprofiled road cut a lazier yet much faster ess down, across and up out of the valley. No more anciennes douannes, this was red-blooded: that\u2019ll be the real Eau Rouge, thank you. Its ramping effect, however, was diluted by the rain that fatally caught out Dick Seaman on the opposite, return leg of the circuit: Hermann Lang, Mercedes-Benz W154 (with M163 engine), 101.4mph.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n By 1950 and the inauguration of the (second) World Championship, Spa had undergone further surgery. Its tight right-hander on the outskirts of Stavelot town was by-passed with a new Stavelot \u2013 a sweeping, helpfully cambered right that opened invitingly at its exit. \u2018Nino\u2019 Farina thus uncorked an 115.1mph race lap in his Alfetta, faster than team-mate Juan Fangio\u2019s subsequent season\u2019s best at Reims in France (112.3mph) but slower than the Argentinian\u2019s timesheet topper at Monza (117.5mph).<\/p>\n Reims\u2019 rapid response was to undercut its photogenic but nadgery Gueux village section with a flat-maybe right of its own. This was linked by a new section of track to Muizon, a tight-ish right that usefully extended the subsequent hidden-dip fang along Route Nationale 31 towards Thillois. Merc rookie Hans Herrmann lapped this revised layout at 121.5mph in 1954, the first year of the 2.5-litre Formula 1 (Apologies to D.B., but I think we can overlook its 750cc-supercharged effort.)<\/p>\n Monza, suddenly lagging in the speed stakes, went several steps beyond in 1955 when it merged a new steepling oval with its long-established parkland blat: Stirling Moss, Mercedes-Benz W196 Stromlinienwagen<\/em>, 134mph.<\/p>\n