s after triple win in 1930 The Spa 24 Hours was conceived by Jules de Their and Henri Langlois Van Ophem just one year after the inaugural
24 Hours of Le Mans was run. It debuted in 1924 over a circuit on public roads between the towns of
Francorchamps,
Malmedy and Stavelot, under the auspices of the
Royal Automobile Club of Belgium (RACB). The present circuit was inaugurated in 1979 with only slight variations since then. The Spa 24 Hours was part of the
European Touring Car Championship from 1966 to 1973, again in 1976 and from 1982 to 1988 (with the exception of
1987 when it was part of the
inaugural World Touring Car Championship). The event also counted towards the
World Sportscar Championship in
1953 and the
World Endurance Championship in
1981. As on the
Nürburgring, both a 24h and a 1000 km race is held at Spa, as the
1000 km Spa for
sports car racing were introduced in 1966. Cars entered have spanned from the Russian
Moskvitch and models with sub-1 liter engines such as the
NSU Prinz TT to the luxurious V8-powered
Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3. Tuned by
Mercedes-AMG, the 6834 cc and so-called "Red pig" finished as high as second in 1971. During the 1975 race, Dutch driver Wim Boshuis and a track marshal were killed in two separate incidents. Boshuis was killed when his vehicle collided with other cars on the track, while the track marshal was killed 30 minutes later when Belgian driver
Alain Peltier collided with a railing. With the participation of
Swiss Lilian Bryner on the victorious
Ferrari 550 of the
BMS Scuderia Italia team, the 2004 race marked the first time in history that a female driver was part of the winning team of a 24-hour endurance race in a
Gran Turismo with more than . The current version of the Spa 24 Hours is an event under the GT World Challenge Europe Powered by AWS and Intercontinental GT Challenge calendar, although it was previously run as part of the
FIA GT Championship featuring GT1 and GT2 machinery, and by various touring car series. Currently, the cars run fall under the FIA
GT3 and GT3 Cup classifications. It has also been a round of the
SRO Group's
Intercontinental GT Challenge since its inaugural season in 2016. 2020 saw the race held
behind closed doors for the first time due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2022, the
2023 Belgian Grand Prix Formula One race was scheduled to be held on July 28–30, which clashed with the traditional date of the Spa 24 Hours, so the latter was forced to be rescheduled to early July.
Coupe du Roi The best manufacturer wins the
Coupe du Roi (King's Cup), which is not necessarily the race winners. The cup is won by the manufacturer with the most points, accrued by cars that are made by the same manufacturer. For example, Australian car manufacturer
Holden won the Coupe du Roi in 1986 despite their
cars finishing the race in 18th, 22nd and 23rd positions outright. ==List of winners==