Racing in the rain is a heady spectacle but tragic history at Spa weighs heavy

The Guardian

5 days ago

Having been a mainstay in Formula One since the championship's inaugural world championship year in 1950, no one is taken by surprise by the capricious nature of the weather at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Yet once again this weekend it was the climate that held court at the Belgian Grand Prix, leaving the sport divided over a circuit where the appeal of racing in the rain on a track of such fearsome risk and reward makes for difficult decisions.
The race on Sunday, ultimately a somewhat pedestrian affair, was won by McLaren's Oscar Piastri after the start had been delayed for an hour and 20 minutes owing to the rain that swept in across the Ardennes mountains. This was not an unusual occurrence. In 2021 the meeting here ended in farce as all but two laps were completed behind a safety car when an afternoon deluge continued until a 'result' was declared, as unedifying and insulting to the fans as it was.
A midsummer day in July guarantees nothing in Spa. Cycling to the track on Sunday morning there were vast stair rods of precipitation yet by the descent into Francorchamps the sun was shining again. The past is a foreign country across 10 minutes in the Ardennes.
By the time the race was ready to go the weather was similarly fickle. The downpour that swamped the grid had largely stopped when the formation lap began but the circuit was still wet.
The rain was not the real problem however. Spray from these ground-effect cars is huge. The regulations were designed to improve overtaking by channelling the dirty air in their wake upwards. But it also ensures that in the wet the water is similarly channelled and hurled vertically with enormous force.
This spectacular plume of liquid then promptly comes down on all the following cars and makes for very low visibility. This was the problem on Sunday, not whether the tyres were able to cope with a wet track. The intermediate rubber was fine with the conditions in Spa, which did not even require the full wet tyres. Indeed of late it is almost always visibility not grip that prevents racing, suggesting full wet tyres are now all but pointless. Were they ever to be used the conditions would be such that racing would surely not commence because of visibility problems.
As it was, after the delayed start, it was only seven laps in when Lewis Hamilton decided the track was already dry enough for slick tyres. He was right and the field followed him in. The reaction afterwards ranged from Max Verstappen – whose car was set up for a wet race – arguing that classic wet racing was in danger of disappearing because of the FIA's caution, to George Russell bluntly stating it would have been 'stupidity' to start on time given the conditions when the race was supposed to begin.
The majority appeared to concur with Russell given Spa is such a challenging track. Quite apart from its historic legacy in the old configuration that claimed so many drivers' lives, it is still a formidable and unforgiving test. In recent years both Anthoine Hubert, in 2019, and Dilano van 't Hoff, in 2023, were killed here.
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As Charles Leclerc noted: 'On a track like this with what happened historically, I think you cannot forget about it. For that reason, I'd rather be safe than too early.' It was an opinion echoed by Fernando Alonso and Piastri among other drivers.
The problem it highlighted for F1 is that many drivers and fans alike want to see racing in the rain. It is a great leveller, where mechanical and aerodynamic advantage are negated and the seat of the pants feel and touch of a driver counts for so much. The call at Spa by the FIA feels like the right one, to err on the side of safety, but as the sport heads into new regulations for 2026 it was a reminder that it might try to find a way to allow the contest everyone wants to see, even when the heavens open.