Fascination for the ‘old’ Spa

1970 1000 km of Spa. The Gulf-Porsche 917K driven by Jo Siffert and Brian Redman (picture-above) leads, at full-speed, the sister car of Pedro Rodriguez and Leo Kinnunen, on top of the most iconic corner: Eau Rouge.

The old Spa-Francorchamps layout was just about flat-out for nearly the entire 8.7 mile distance and the circuit sped into the rural countryside, whereas now, the circuit (7 km) stays inside a part of the mountainous Ardennes forest.

Lost corners like Burnenville, Malmedy the infamous Masta Kink, Stavelot and La Carrière were all 180+mph and corners like Eau Rouge, Blanchimont and Clubhouse were 150+mph. So every corner except the ultra-slow La Source hairpin was extremely fast, and to add to the mental challenge, most of those corners had to be taken just slightly under flat out.

Every corner was just as important as the other – if a driver lifted even just a little bit through any of the high-speed bends, he would easily lose 2-3 seconds from his lap time. Even worse – if a driver made even the slightest mistake, he would very likely have a huge catastrophic high speed accident, which in those safety-absent days, almost always meant serious injury or …

The 1970 race was one of the best examples of the great sports-car battles of the 1970s. Some of the top drivers in the world at the time, battling with each other (Siffert, Ickx, Rodriguez, Redman, Elford) at the most fearsomely fast circuit in Europe, and there was a Porsche-Ferrari confrontation. Rodriguez lapped Spa at 3:16.5 in his Porsche 917K (picture below), averaging 160.513 mph (258.321 km/h). So the Siffert-Redman Porsche won, and the Surtees-Ickx Ferrari was second.