SpA 2024
One girl travels to Belgium alone to slay the 2023 F1 Grand Prix at Spa…
Spa is located about half way down Belgium. You could comfortably get there from the UK in a day if you’re driving or about a week if you’re walking (although you’d also have to swim the channel). We decided to fly from Stansted, and weirdly flew to Eindhoven in the south of Holland, and then got a hire car to drive from there down to our Airbnb somewhere in Belgium.
This all turned out to be pretty straight forward, and our pad for the weekend was about half an hour from the track.
No, of course I didn’t! I went there with my awesome Fams of course didn’t I, silly!! So how did it go, and what should you expect if you’re planning on going in 2025? Read on for some tips..
So we went to the track for all 3 days, which included Practice on the Friday, a Sprint and Qualifying on the Saturday and of course the Race on the Sunday.
Now the thing about Spa is, if you’ve never been there, its known for being a tad rainy. When it rains in Belgium, it is torrential and believe me it rained a lot while we were there. In fact the first morning we arrived at the track, we turned up drenched as we walked from the Park ‘n’ Ride to the main entrance.
The seats my Pa had booked were in the Stand at Speed Corner. This meant our spot was in the furthest possible location in the whole of Spa Francochamps from the main entrance where we came in. This is about a 5 kilometer walk just to get to our seats, whilst being thoroughly wet through.
Did this dampen our spirits? Absolutely no chance. In fact, everybody was the same, squelching around in wellies and wearing polythene rain macs but all wearing their fan colours for Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull or whoever they supported.
I’ve always found the name Speed Corner an odd choice as it’s certainly not the fastest corner at Spa. Given the French-themed naming elsewhere around the course, such as Blanchimont, Eau Rouge, La Source and Les Combes, Speed Corner sounds particularly English. As it is one of the newer stands with presumably no obvious history to it, I figure they called it that in order to entice spectators like us to make the soggy trek around the circuit to get there.
The view was great as the cars come racing down from Rivage and then putting the acceleration on through turn 9 and then down towards Pouhon.
What is fun on the Friday and the Saturday is taking the chance to view the Practice sessions from one of the many General Admission areas around the track. General Admission areas are parts of the track that aren’t seated (unless you bring your own chair or are sitting on the ground). We chose Blanchimont to watch the Sprint Race as there’s a bank up in the trees that gives a lovely view down onto the track.
The race itself was of course spectacular. I’m told that F1 cars used to be so much louder before hybrid engines and I believe it, but there’s still nothing that beats the thrill of hearing an F1 car thundering up to full speed as it echoes though the woodlands surrounding Spa.
