Sébastien Buemi: As you grow up
you always dream of racing in Spa.
It's a mix of old school corners,
dangerous and fast sections.
Hi everyone, my name is Sébastien Buemi
and I'm racing for Toyota Gazoo
in the WEC Championship.
And I'm here to take you turn by turn
through Spa-Francorchamps.
So basically here we are,
starting a lap of Spa-Francorchamps,
getting into Turn 1, La Source corner.
This corner is very important
just because you have a long straight
and Radillon following.
You make more lap time by making sure you get a good exit
and clip the apex and try to dive in
and carry a lot of speed.
So the exit is really important.
So you're going down to Eau Rouge.
You feel all the power from the car coming in.
Eau Rouge/Radillon remains still quite dangerous
just because of the speed you get there
and the runoff is not very big.
It's really the most dangerous section definitely.
The biggest thing is what car you are driving around Spa.
If you are driving a Formula 1 car,
it's like a straight line.
You can basically do it flat.
With the Toyota car, it's a corner.
It's not easy,
just because you have nearly the speed of a Formula 1 car,
but you have the weight and the down force of a WEC car.
And I think what makes it special is,
in general, the elevation.
It's like a big wall, you arrive there with a lot of speed,
and at some point you are blind.
So all those small details makes it, I would say, special.
If you turn a tiny bit too late, or too early,
you can have a big crash.
So how you position the car
going into corner is very crucial,
just because you cannot afford any mistakes
if you want to stay flat and carry the speed.
You need to touch the first apex a tiny bit,
then you obviously try to be very smooth
with the steering,
and then you cut a little bit on the exit curb
on top of Eau Rouge,
just to try to straight line as much as you can.
We're going up the straight here.
It's a pretty long straight.
It's where we reach the highest speed
in the LMP car, 315 kph.
It's going uphill quite a lot.
People don't really notice that on TV.
And then you basically brake at the start for this section:
Turn 5, 6 and 7.
What you do entering the section
has a domino effect until you exit.
If you, again, don't enter exactly with the right speed
and the right line, you drift away all corners.
Positioning is very tricky
and you need to make sure you prepare
the exit of Turn 7 well
because then you have a long straight going into Turn 8.
It's a pretty big place where you can lose time.
So basically we are approaching Turn 8.
And here this Turn 8 is a pretty tricky one
because you need to enter very early,
and you need to make sure you keep the inside as much
as you can otherwise you'll make too many meters,
you drive too much,
you don't have enough time to prepare the next corner.
You try to accelerate straight,
and then you try to position directly the car for Turn 9.
Most likely you're gonna use all the exit curb
out of Turn 9 just to make sure you carry the speed
out of that corner.
So then we go down to Turn 10.
It's one of the nicest corners of the track.
It's Pouhon.
You basically arrive in sixth gear
and it's a very quick left-hander.
You try to keep inside,
and then you open a little, touch the outside curb,
but not too much.
If you touch it too much,
you can drift completely out of the track.
So it's really important there to turn at the right time,
and have a lot of front end, otherwise,
you don't carry the speed.
And then you basically arrive in one of the chicanes:
12, 13.
Again, here positioning is very important because
you wanna be very close to the inside curb,
but not touch it too much.
Otherwise, you upset the car,
and it's not very nice.
This chicane is just about trying
to keep the speed and not do too many meters.
And then we arrive in one of the most important corners.
Similar to La Source, this Turn 14 is very important
because the exit, once you go back on power there,
you stay flat out until the last chicane.
So this Turn 14 you try to use all of the outside curb.
You try to be very smooth on the steering.
You do Turn 15 flat out, and then you stay flat.
And you just try to focus on your up shift,
make sure you don't up shift too early or too late.
And now we are already in Blanchimont.
Blanchimont is not really a corner anymore for us.
Even on the wet, it's nearly flat.
You just stay flat, try to not upset the car,
carry the speed,
and then focus to brake into the last chicane.
Then we arrive in the final section of the track
which is Turn 18 and 19.
Not easy to brake.
It's quite bumpy when you brake,
and you try to slow down the car as much as you can.
It's quite narrow and quite tight,
so you have to use first gear.
And, again, here the most important is to prepare quite well
just to make sure you have a good exit.
Because here you'll feel all the electric power
plus the combustion engine.
So you have 1,000 horsepower,
and it's very easy to lose traction.
So you try to accelerate straight,
not touch too much the curb.
And then that's it, we've done a lap of Spa-Francorchamps.
I think that Spa is a bit special for every driver.
Today, on those new tracks, you have massive runoffs,
and it doesn't feel so natural,
where Spa is flowing, and it's fast,
and it's dangerous, and it has all the things that you want
to have to have such a great track.
AJ Caldwell: Hey, I'm AJ, thanks for watching.
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