Original layout In 1918,
German headquarters were in Spa, and in 1919, the
Treaty of Versailles separated the
Eupen-Malmedy region from Prussia and the German Empire. Between January and June 1920, a plebiscite was held, without a secret ballot and under other questionable circumstances. As a result, the Transitional Government prepared for the unification of Eupen-Malmedy with Belgium in June 1925. Jules de Thier, owner of the Liège newspaper
La Meuse, was looking for a site to host a race, and following a meeting at the Hotel des Bruyères in Francorchamps, with burgomaster Joseph de Crawhez and racing-car driver Henri Langlois van Ophem, it was decided that the roads from Spa-Francorchamps to the former German
Malmedy, to
Stavelot, and back towards Francorchamps constituted an ideal triangle-shaped circuit with few tight corners and long fast sections.
Eau Rouge creek was the Belgian-
German Empire border until 1920, after which date the border post became known as the
Ancienne Douane, 'former customs office'. After passing through former German Bürnenville, the track crossed the former border again halfway on the road between
Malmedy and
Stavelot, at the junction of the Meiz road. In Stavelot, there was a sharp right-hander, later replaced with a sweeping bypass. The track's inaugural race was planned for August 1921, but was cancelled when only one driver entered. Before the 1979 changes, Spa-Francorchamps was the fastest road circuit in Europe, and it had a reputation for being dangerous and very fast – it demanded calmness from drivers, and most were frightened of it.The former Spa circuit was distinguished by its sustained high-speed characteristics, wherein drivers experienced little to no reduction in velocity throughout a lap duration of approximately three to four minutes. This made it an extraordinarily difficult mental challenge, because most of the corners were taken at more than and were not quite flat – every corner was as important as the one before it. If a driver lifted the throttle more than expected, then whole seconds, not tenths, would be lost. The slightest error of any kind carried multiple harsh consequences, but this also worked inversely: huge advantages could be gained if a driver came out of a corner slightly faster. Like the
Le Mans circuit, which also ran on public roads, Spa became notorious for fatal accidents. At the
1960 Belgian Grand Prix, two drivers,
Chris Bristow and
Alan Stacey, were killed within 15 minutes (although Stacey's accident was caused by a bird hitting him in the face) and
Stirling Moss had crashed at Burnenville during practice and was severely injured. When
Armco crash barriers were added to the track in 1970, deaths became less frequent, but the track was still notorious for other factors. The Ardennes forest had very unpredictable weather, to the point that some areas were experiencing heavy rains while others had clear skies. This factor was a commonality on long circuits, but the unpredictable weather at Spa, combined with the fact that it was a track with all but one corner being high-speed, made it one of, if not the most, dangerous race track in the world. As a result, the Formula 1 and motorcycle Grands Prix and 1000 km sportscar races saw smaller than usual fields at Spa because most drivers and riders feared the circuit and did not like racing there. Multiple fatalities during the 1973 and 1975 24 Hours of Spa touring car races more or less sealed the old circuit's fate, and by 1978, the last year Spa was in its original form, the only major races held there were the
Belgian motorcycle Grand Prix and the
Spa 24 Hours touring car race; the 1000 km World Sportscar Championship race no longer took place after 1975 and did not come back until 1982. In 1969, the Belgian Grand Prix was boycotted by Formula One drivers due to the extreme danger. There had been ten car racing fatalities in total at the track in the 1960s, five of which had come in the last two years. The drivers demanded changes made to Spa which were not possible on short notice, so the Belgian Grand Prix was dropped that year. Armco barriers were added to the track and sections of it were improved (especially the Stavelot and Hollowell sections), just like they had been added for the 1969 Le Mans race. One last race there
the following year on the improved track was still not satisfactory enough (even after a temporary chicane was added at Malmedy just for that race) for the drivers in terms of safety, and even with the chicane, the drivers averaged over during the race. For the 1971 race, the track owners and authorities had not brought the track up to date with mandatory safety measures, and the race was cancelled. Formula One would not return to Spa until
1983 on the modern track.
Masta Kink The Masta Kink "was by far the most difficult corner in the world", according to
Jackie Stewart, who was an F1 driver at the time. After a long run from Malmedy, the cars would reach top speed before having to negotiate Masta, a high speed left-right chicane, and a good exit speed was vital as it was followed by another long straight run to Stavelot. This was a fast and dangerous corner, as it was situated in the middle of two long unbroken straights, both about long. The speed in this sector could reach . Masta was removed from F1 racing after
the 1970 season. Jackie Stewart's aim to improve safety in racing was set in motion by his crash there in
1966, when his
BRM ended upside-down in a ditch near a farmhouse on the outside of the corner, with fuel gushing out of the tank onto Stewart, who had broken ribs. At this point, many of the Formula One drivers disliked Spa (including Stewart and
Jim Clark, who had some of his greatest wins there) because of the immense speeds that were constant on the track. While he was spectating at the 1972
12 Hours of Sebring, Stewart attempted to organise a boycott of the Spa 1000 km race that year, a move that was not respected by many of the drivers, because Spa was still popular with racing drivers outside of Formula One. Stewart later described the old Spa circuit in 1986 as being as "ferocious as a tiger", and he later described Masta in an interview in 2011 as perhaps the hardest corner on any racetrack he raced on in his career; even more so than Eau Rouge. turning into La Source in 1965 At the 1972 24-hour touring car race, during one of his pit stops at night,
Hans-Joachim Stuck shouted to his co-driver
Jochen Mass over the noise from the cars that he should "look out for body parts at the Masta Kink". Mass arrived there expecting to see pieces from cars all over the road, but discovered it was instead the remains of
marshal Léon Grisard, who had been run over by
Walter Brun whilst inspecting the track. After Masta, and at the end of the subsequent Hollowell Straight, there used to be a sharp hairpin at the entrance to the town itself, which was later bypassed by a quicker, banked right hand corner. Another fast section of road in the forest leads to Blanchimont. Here, the new short Grand Prix track of 1979 joins the old layout. Eighteen Formula One World Championship Grands Prix were run on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit's original configuration, which was boycotted by F1 in 1969, before the revised circuit abandoned it in 1979. The lap record of the old triangle-shaped track is 3 minutes and 13.4 seconds, held by the French driver
Henri Pescarolo, driving a
Matra at the 1973 Spa 1000 km World Sportscar Championship race at an average speed of , but the fastest ever recorded time of the old Spa circuit was the pole position time for the same race—3 minutes and 12.7 seconds by
Jacky Ickx in a
Ferrari 312PB. World Champion
Jacques Villeneuve once spoke of the effects of downforce, saying that to get through the corner the drivers have to drive faster, because downforce increases the faster a race car goes. Without lifting the throttle through Eau Rouge, a car would be flat out from La Source, along the Kemmel straight to Les Combes, a total distance of . A loss of control through this section can often lead to a heavy shunt, as usually the rear end of the car is lost, and the resulting impact is often lateral. Several famous racing drivers have crashed while driving through Raidillon de l'Eau Rouge, including
Stefan Bellof fatally in a
Porsche sportscar, Guy Renard during the 1990
24h of Spa-Francorchamps in a Toyota Corolla GT, and
Alex Zanardi in a season-ending crash during a practice session of the
1993 Belgian Grand Prix in a
Lotus.
Jacques Villeneuve suffered a heavy crash at the top of Raidillon de l'Eau Rouge in qualifying during the
1999 Belgian Grand Prix, which he described as "my best-ever crash". His teammate
Ricardo Zonta followed Villeneuve by having a similar accident later in practice, leading cartoonist
Jim Bamber to show BAR boss Craig Pollock telling Zonta: "Jacques is the quickest through Eau Rouge, so go out there and do exactly what Jacques does…" It was revealed later that Villeneuve and Zonta had a personal bet to see if either could take the corner flat out. Following the deaths of
Roland Ratzenberger and
Ayrton Senna at
Imola in 1994, the following F1 races saw the introduction of chicanes made up from stacked tyres. The entry to Raidillon de l'Eau Rouge was obstructed in such a way in 1994, although it was returned to its previous configuration the following year. The corner was slightly modified for the
2002 Belgian Grand Prix. When fans first saw the course configuration at the start of the weekend of the
2005 Turkish Grand Prix, they noted that an uphill kink on the back straight was similar to Raidillon de l'Eau Rouge; the kink was therefore jokingly dubbed "Faux Rouge" (a
pun on the name of the original Spa corner using the French word "faux", meaning "false").
Blanchimont The Blanchimont high-speed left-hand turn, present in both the old circuit and the new, shorter, track, is the final sweeping corner of the track before the chicane, which leads to the pit straight. This turn and the approach to it have been the scene of severe accidents over time, the most recent being in 2001, when
Luciano Burti lost the front wing of his
Prost due to a clash with
Eddie Irvine's Jaguar, losing front downforce and steering, leaving the track at and piling into the tyre wall, the impact knocking him out and burying the car into a mound of tyres. Problems have also occurred in lower classes of racing with
Tom Kristensen having a violent crash in a
Formula 3000 car in 1997 after running wide on the entry to the Blanchimont turn and subsequently hitting the wall, throwing the monocoque back out in the middle of the track, where it was hit by numerous cars before coming to a complete halt. The run-off area is narrower than in other turns taken at this speed, and behind the protective barriers there is a 7–8 metre drop. This is the first turn taken by the cars after the new track rejoins the route of the old track. Blanchimont was also the scene where in 1992 after
Érik Comas had crashed heavily during Friday's session; Ayrton Senna stopped, disembarked his car and sprinted to help the injured driver, with other cars driving past at racing speeds.
Jacky Ickx corner From the
2018 Belgian Grand Prix turn 11 has been called the
Jacky Ickx corner as a tribute to his career. The corner was formerly known by most drivers as either "Speakers corner" because the circuit's public address announcer could see the cars for the first time after the cars disappeared into the forest past Raidillon de l’Eau Rouge, or simply "The Corner with No Name". There are two versions of Jacky Ickx as of 2022, being the primary corner for cars and a shorter corner for motorcycles. ==Problems and renovations==