{"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

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Trumped, Spa continued to smooth, ease, straighten and neaten, and had (un)comfortably topped 130mph by 1958.<\/p>\n

It was nip and tuck by 1960:<\/p>\n

Reims: 135.1mph<\/p>\n

Spa: 135.4mph<\/p>\n

Monza: 136.7mph \u2013 though no doubt this speed would have been higher still had not the British teams boycotted the Italian GP in protest of the unsubtle reinsertion of the oof-ow-ooer oval.<\/p>\n

The 3-litre \u2018Return to Power\u2019 of 1966 marked Reims\u2019 F1 hurrah, Lorenzo Bandini circulating at 141.4mph before having to jury-rig his Ferrari 312\u2019s broken throttle with a stretch of wire snaffled from a fence. Team-mate \u2018Lulu\u2019 Scarfiotti\u2019s fastest lap at Monza that year was \u2018only\u2019 139.2mph. And it had rained at Spa, scattering the field hither and yon.<\/p>\n

These speeds, though, were put into context in 1967 when Dan Gurney\u2019s Eagle-Weslake clocked a 148.8mph race lap at an overcast but thankfully dry Spa. (Jim Clark\u2019s Lotus 49-Cosworth DFV had cracked 150mph in practice.) It\u2019s little wonder that wings sprouted here in 1968.<\/p>\n

It couldn\u2019t last, of course. Spa was given a chance to \u2018redeem\u2019 itself by a resurgent GPDA, but its extra Armco and unsatisfactory Malm\u00e9dy chicane of 1970 could only ever be a stay of execution: Chris Amon, works March 701, 152mph. The 1971 Belgian GP was cancelled and Nivelles-Baulers \u2013 the 2.3 miles of anodyne anonymity that not long ago morphed into the trading estate that surely it was destined always to become \u2013 loomed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This \u2018speed war\u2019 thus won by 1971 \u2013 Henri Pescarolo, in Frank Williams\u2019 March 711, 153.5mph \u2013 Monza was no doubt less concerned about having to dam its slipstream with a chicane or two in 1972.<\/p>\n

Forty years on, back-to-back grands prix at the still-majestic Spa and historic Monza will provide a much-anticipated kick-start to a championship that has been on hold for a month, while the subsequent dotting and capping of its extended denouement by Suzuka and Interlagos will carry me through the other, homogenised races, where, like as not, only the results will catch my eye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"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. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":744,"featured_media":2639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118712,121828],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571041,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions\/571041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}