Ask any motorsport fan from around the world what the best corner is in racing and I would guess that at least half will reply with Eau Rouge or Eau Rouge-Raidillon; this isn’t without good reason. Diving downhill on a long run from turn one of La Source, cars are met with a rapid left-right flick at near maximum speed whilst the car bottoms out as the suspension compresses when reaching the deepest part of the dip, then leading up a gentle left hander with a massively steep incline to then arrive on the Kemmel Straight. It’s one of those corners one can comfortably label as ‘butt-clenching’, fast and dynamic it always looks incredible when cars are going through at full tilt and anyone not awed by seeing the spectacle is fooling themselves.
It does, however, have a darker side. A danger surpassing any other corner I can think of and for many it carries the memory of that danger deep within it’s surface. Death. The spectre of death is always present in motorsport, very racer knows there’s a risk every time they get in a car, on a bike, in a boat or whatever mode of transport they’re racing; they accept that certain level of risk which comes with the territory but is there a point when this risk elevates to unacceptable levels? Many say there is; Callum Ilott for example:
This is a certified racing driver, he was in the F2 race at Spa in 2019, I’d say he has every right to make such comments and they should be taken seriously.
The subject of how dangerous any particular thing may be tends to often get derailed by subjective opinion, like everything else I suppose, which is why I try to use as much of my experience and knowledge in safety when writing about safety matters within motorsport. I strongly suspect this will end up derailed too, despite my best efforts, but I have to try.
Why is it dangerous?
These corners are old. Very old. The current configuration is practically unchanged since the original layout had the Ancienne Douanne loop removed in 1939. For anyone keeping score that is 82 years ago. During the intervening time the only real safety change came about after the death of Stefan Bellof in 1985. The barriers were shifted back, away form the track to allow for greater run off and the addition of gravel but only by around 20 meters (65 feet). We have a section of track, largely unchanged for over 80 years, that has cars now racing on it which can carry around 160kph (100mph) more speed through corners and the run off areas have been extended far enough to accommodate less than half of that. Even less after the removal of the gravel as asphalt run off provides much less slowing for an out of control car. As things stand, the longest run off distance between track and barrier is a paltry 23 meters (75 feet). Yes, twenty-three at one of the fastest points of any track on the calendar (I am rounding up quite generously too).
The elevation change of the corner adds another level of danger. The forces acting on the cars are massive as the gravity acting on them is both amplified and attenuated from the compression at the bottom of the hill followed by negative G forces going over the crest. A climb of 28 meters (92 feet) over a distance of 344 meters (1129 feet), for the entire section is pretty much unheard of anywhere else other than, perhaps, a hill climb.
As was seen in the accident at the 24 Hours of Spa involving four cars and resulting in multiple fractures for Jack Aitken, it’s not just the forces form this elevation which causes problems. After left-right at the bottom of the hill, the left over the crest of the hill offers extremely limited visibility. Taking a look at a still from the ob board of Hakkinen in 1998 we can see that, as the crest is approached, the visibility of what lies just beyond he crest is zero. I include an image showing the camera position to highlight that even this view, with zero visibility remember, is around 150mm (6 in) higher than the drivers eye.
When comparing to cars of today you also to consider a few more points which can exacerbate these issues: The cars are faster offering less time to react, drivers sit lower in the cars, have helmets with smaller viewports and have the Halo all of which further reduce forward visibility.
I’m making such an issue of visibility because of the run offs and barriers. In the 24 Hours crash as well as, to some degree, the death of Anthoine Hubert it’s the barriers ability to rebound a car back into the path of other cars, whilst at the same time eliminating their forward momentum, which makes the lack of visibility so important. Cars at high speed are left with near zero time to react to a damaged vehicle, or even just debris from one, being strewn across the circuit.
I’m looking into the ‘what if’ category for a moment here but despite not being an incident which has occurred yet, this is how evaluation of possible safety issues should be done. The pit lane exit. It’s probably never even crossed your mind because it’s yet to have an incident but the pit exit runs, completely exposed, alongside the most dangerous points of this corner sequence. In this image I’ve highlighted the portion of the pit exit which has exactly zero protection from the live racetrack. This is even after changes to the pit exit from when it was even more exposed before as the rejoin point was directly opposite the Raidillon apex. Sometimes I wonder what people were thinking.
The reason I bring this up is that, in only slightly different circumstances, we could have seen already enormous crashes end up even worse. Look below and you’ll see where I’ve roughly shown the impact points of the crashes for Kevin Magnussen in 2016 (Yellow), Anthoine Hubert in 2019 (Pink) and Jacques Villeneuve in 1998 (Red) and whilst admittedly F1/2 do not use this pit exit, the point still stands for many other series.
Imagine any one of these happens when someone is exiting the pits, we have two scenarios. In the first, a driver accelerates hard as they race to rejoin the track only for a car to appear in front of them and suddenly lose all speed as it impacts the barrier. In the second a driver is exiting the pits and gets collected in the side or rear by a completely out of control car at huge speed. Either one of these then further adds to cars and/or debris across the run off and/or track causing more danger. I think we can all agree that, despite appearing like a worst case, it is very possible. I dread to even contemplate the idea of what could happen on the run to Eau Rouge with cars coming together and no making the corner, pit exit cars which have yet to build up any speed due to the kink at the top of the hill would be at the mercy of pure luck with what might happen.
What Can Be Done?
There are a few options to rectify these issues that I have come up with, some small changes, some larger changes and at one huge change. All carry different levels of alteration to the track – from small to large and all carry changes to the safety levels – again from small to large.
The Official Changes – I’ll start with what Spa-Francorchamps is actually doing (some work in progress, no idea as to how far this has gone). In this video you get a full list of everything planned as well as rough CGI of what will change for the corners in question.
You can see that there’s quite a large area of additional run off being created on the left of the complex as well as taking back the barrier which juts out near the apex of the left over the hill. These are excellent plans but I fear they don’t take things far enough. You can also see that prior to this area the run off remains unchanged at 20 meters (65 feet) maximum and the changed area extends only to around 35 meters (114 feet) at it’s widest point. The plans do state that this is to be a gravel trap which will aid in slowing cars greatly, especially when including the incline – less likelihood of skipping over the gravel -but not for bikes which is why these changes are being made. Anyone who watches MotoGP avidly will know just how far the bikes and riders can tumble through gravel traps and it’s very often much further than this. Furthermore, this gravel addition will only be useful up to roughly the end of the blue hatched area in the image below; after this point the cars are already becoming unloaded from the change in elevation and will skip across the gravel with little difference as to it being there or not. This also applies to the right side run off after the hill.
References are also made for changing the right side run off after the hill to gravel and extending it, although I’m not sure how well this can be achieved as the ground drops away quite sharply just beyond the fence itself. You can see on this elevation profile the ground drops away by 2.5 meters(8.2 feet) in roughly the same distance of the run off width. It can be done but this is large scale civil engineering, building a grandstand is extremely simple, re-profiling the actual lay of the land is something else entirely and with a budget of €80 million for all the works being carried out, it’s a big ask.
Doing some quick maths to highlight this issue, to extend the existing run off by it’s own width, which is only 16.5 meters (54 feet) would require at minimum 3506.25 cubic meters (123822.05 cubic feet) of soil or dirt. This alone works out to being 4523 tonnes of material. That’s just the volume of material to even out the slope. Major undertaking.
My Options: The Safest One – This will obviously be the most controversial and I’m certain most people wont like it, hell I don’t particularly like it but it is the only possible option which fully eliminates any risk at all of repeating accidents like that of Hubert. The idea? Reintroduce Ancienne Douanne. It does have several positives to it too. First and foremost, it is as safe as it is possible to make this section of the track. We have larger run offs for the parts which now also have reduced speed, from a safety standpoint this is win-win. Second, as I was doing this I realised that this would actually be better for racing, no seriously! Through Eau Rouge we do get the relatively rare side by side moments but there’s largely no actual overtaking which happens, just set ups for the long and overpowered drag down the Kemmel.
With this solution, it not only introduces two overtaking points – one at the ‘now a corner’ Eau Rouge and another at the hairpin of Douanne. After this we have cars in most closer proximity for the drag along the Kemmel Straight but coming out of a medium speed corner instead of already being at near max-V. Third, it makes the pit exit much safer with the entire pit exit lane protected behind barriers until it’s time to rejoin the track and it also rejoins next to cars at a lower speed. The negative from this however is that Eau Rouge-Raidillon is gone, this will be a lot for people to take. I’m absolutely certain that 100% of you, reading this right now, cannot deny the possible great racing we could get from this layout but at the same time I’m also certain 95% or more of you simply can’t stomach the idea of losing those legendary kinks which give so much excitement.
My Options: The Combination – This final one takes the best of the official change announced by the circuit itself with a simple addition to fix the pit issue. It is great to see such a large run off added at the top of the hill on the left side, it will vastly reduce the chance of cars ending up back on the track after a crash but it also doesn’t address the right hand side or the pit exit. What I’ve done is to simply add SAFER barrier along the full length of the pit exit which can also be altered/added to with the airbag barriers required for hosting MotoGP races, as is the plan.
Conclusions
It hasn’t taken me long to come up with these ideas and, of course, it would be no big undertaking to adapt and modify such suggestions to suit the engineering possibilities available. The run off could well be extended at the top of the hill, despite being a massive amount of building works it can be done and any number of other possibilities could be done but they must involve people who have experience and knowledge of both safety studies and of driving on these tracks. When drivers are openly speaking about changes being required, and Callum Ilott is not alone in making such statements, then further investigation absolute has to be carried out.
I will sign off by asking that you read my other pieces on safety, they will give you an insight into how my mind works and how much detail I’ve gone into when studying and researching safety. I find it quite easy to look at these things without sentiment about racing history or the spirit of competition, with regard to safety, only the safety matters.
Thanks for taking the time to read, I hope you read some other piece of mine on this site and if you’ve enjoyed what I’ve written or think that it has some value for the motorsport community to hear please share and retweet and leave a comment, I’d very like to hear feedback about these articles. If you really liked it then you could even buy me a coffee or leave a small tip, I don’t do this writing professionally so anything would be greatly appreciated but absolutely is not required.
Jonty's Corner 
Just increase runoffs and that’s it. They should remove the stadium and extend it even further. No need to change the legendary corner
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