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Whirlwind passage

13. May 2024 
by Pierre Van Vliet
5579 views

The old Spa race track was 14 km long and used open national roads in the hilly landscape of the Ardennes: on this image from 1971, you can see the Porsche 917 of Helmut Marko shooting out of the Stavelot corner before starting the uphill run to La Source, full throttle. The victorious 917 of Pedro Rodriguez and Jackie Oliver would finish the 1000 km at an average speed of 249 km/h!

The Austrian driver, winner of that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours associated with Gijs van Lennep, was a great hopeful when he started in F1 with BRM during the summer, before a silly accident at the 1972 French Grand Prix halted his racing career, when a stone projected by the car he was following, flew through his visor and injured his eye that unfortunately could not be saved…

Source: DR

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