Raidillon, at the top of the Eau Rouge sequence at Spa Francorchamps has seen a lot of nasty
accidents, with consequences including very serious injury and death over the last few years.
And the very same kind of accident keeps happening, again and again.
So, despite Eau Rouge being a big, old-school fan-favourite and something genuinely unique
and dramatic among racing circuits - particularly on the F1 calendar - should it finally be changed?
I think the answer is yes… and no. And actually, the answer is a whole lot less controversial than
the question appears. Advert
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saving and VPN all over the shop. Now - back to Spa Francorchamps.
In 2019, following a big accident at the top of Raidillon, Anthoine Hubert lost his life
and Juan Manuel Correa was severely injured. Earlier this year, during the GT 24 Hour Race,
Jack Aitken suffered fractured vertebrae among his injuries after being collected
at high speed following his crash at Raidillon. The W Series qualifying on Friday featured a six
car accident with cars all piling into each other one after the other at the top of the hill as the
rain picked up at the start of their hot laps. The second Formula 3 race saw Amaury Cordeel hit
the barrier and then get hit by Calan Williams at the top of Raidillon, though at a much
lower speed than some of the other incidents. This weekend hasn’t been helped by a new bump
at Eau Rouge that is likely track deformation after the severe flooding that happened
relatively recently. What these incidents all have
in common is that cars had already had their accident - they’d lost it one way or another
through the Eau Rouge sequence, hit the barrier hard and then get hit again by another car going
flat out through this very fast bit of track. And that’s what makes this all particularly nasty.
Eau Rouge through Raidillon is a fast sequence that begins the flat out run all the way from La
Source to the Les Combes chicane, 2 kilometres down the road. Getting Eau Rouge right and
committing through it is vital as it dictates your speed all the way down the Kemmel Straight and can
save you bundles of time and either set you up for, or protect you from, a potential overtake.
“But here comes Sebastian Vettel…” right? You know how it goes.
Because the run through Raidillon takes the car quickly from a steep uphill climb to flat track
the car actually goes lighter as it crests the top - similar to losing a bunch of downforce
as the car is lifted very slightly from the tarmac and it slightly more skittish.
The dramatic crest also makes the run through Raidillon blind - if there’s anything lurking
on the other side, drivers won’t see it until they get there, increasing the chance of them hitting
an already crashed car or lingering debris. And to top it all, there’s very little run
off around this whole high speed section. So it’s easy for a car to lose it for whatever
reason, hit a barrier and either bounce back across the active race track or be left stranded
in the firing line if anyone else happens to take the corner wrong or - as can often happen
on opening laps - cars end up spread all over the place to avoid incidents and each other
And Spa is one of the wetter tracks we go to. There’s very often rain through at least part
of the weekend, increasing the odds of an error through the section that puts the car on edge.
So let’s first talk about the dangers of secondary impacts as that’s our real concern here.
Most drivers haven’t been put in too much danger from just hitting the barriers alone,
despite how high speed some of the impacts have been and how short the run offs are.
Lando Norris hit the left hand side of Raidillon hard while pushing in the wet
during qualifying and rebounded across the track and almost all the way down the opposite run off
area for an idea of how fast he was going. Now I didn’t include this accident earlier
because he was all on his own with no secondary impact. But he too, went
right across the fast, blind bit of the track and was, frankly, lucky no one else was around.
Especially with the spray and the slippery tarmac. The problem with secondary impacts is the crash
structures of the car are designed to work once. They take all the energy from an impact
and they transform it into breaking, deforming or ejecting the outer parts
of the car to stop that energy essentially getting to the driver and doing them injury.
So if you hit a barrier and use up part of the work of your crash structure and then
get hit again, there’s much less to protect you - especially if the same part of the car
takes the hit. It’s your limited-use shield. So Eau Rouge itself, which I’ll continue to use
casually for this whole sequence of corners, as is colloquially understood - is actually
not that much of a challenge for drivers anymore. Particularly in F1, particularly in the dry.
Most drivers will tell you that. It’s basically flat out without a second thought,
rather than a corner you would have to work up to through practice every weekend before you’d feel
confident pushing the car completely through it. And… that’s fine. It happens. Cars will inevitably
change over time and their relationships with different corners will change too.
Daredevil corners will lose their edge and other corners might offer new challenges.
But it is still a thrill and a fan favourite, and nailing it is a key
part of the lap - especially if in battle. So… if we were to straighten it out. Or
bung a chicane there to slow it down… Well people would flip out. Neuter Eau Rouge! The nerve.
But if it’s to save life and limb… is it something we need to consider?
Let’s face it - iconic, daredevil corners have been chopped before.
In 1994 after the deaths of Senna and Ratzenberger at Imola, that circuit
was dramatically altered to add chicanes at its challenging high speed corners to slow the cars
down and save them from the very limited run offs. That was one of the key ‘enough is enough’ years.
Circuits all across the calendar were given modifications in the same manner - some
in an extremely ‘screw it, that’ll do’ way, while longer term decisions were pulled together.
In 1994, even Spa temporarily altered Eau Rouge - shoving in a chicane in while wider modifications
were made to the surrounding area to make the classic corners safe to plough through again.
In fact, the current “short” layout of Spa was born out of boycotts and protest on
safety grounds. The old 14km danger run through the Ardennes was chopped down into the more
reasonable, safer circuit we know today, just like the old Nordschleife was abandoned by F1 in favour
of the modern Nurburgring grand prix track. In 2005, of course, 7 teams infamously
pulled out of the US Grand Prix over safety concerns at a single corner.
Granted, in this case the inadequate tyres were the reason for the risk but years down the line
even that road course has been altered to remove the full run through the banking.
So iconic corners and even entire circuits can be changes,
abandoned or torn up, no matter how popular. It has happened before and can easily happen again.
Eau Rouge and Raidillon aren’t necessarily safe from all that and we all know how F1 currently
needs little excuse to turn its back on a poorer, old-school, European circuit in favour of a glitzy
new circuit in a place that will throw money at them and attract the VIP-est of guests.
So at the top of this video I asked if Eau Rouge should be changed and I answered myself (because
there’s no one else here) with both Yes and No. Yes because… well all the risk I just mentioned.
The death and injury and stuff that hangs over the corner like a spectre, especially in the wet.
But also “No” because we don’t need to change this bit. The actual track where they drive, as defined
by the white lines. This bit is still fine. Which is good, cause you can still have the
flat-out, stomach churning ride without neutering it for the drivers or the fans.
But these bits are the problem. As I said, the runoffs are very narrow
and practically encourage cars to rebound back into the firing range of oncoming,
flat-out, unsighted traffic. The left side in particular,
by the nature of its limited run off area, actually coaxes cars back onto the circuit
like a funnel. It’s an absolute danger. I’d previously spoken about the difficulties
involved in dealing with this as to the right of Raidillon is a steep drop and the left of
the track is a steep climb. The track here is after all, cut into the side of a hill.
So to increase the run off thoroughly you’ll need to do some serious and expensive landscaping to
raise a huge amount of land on this side and hack away a big chunk of it on the other.
But… they are actually doing just that. Well, some of it.
As part of an 80 million euro transformation (mainly for commercial reasons - adding more
grandstands and making the track suitable for other series) they will be opening up the runoff
on the inside of Raidillon to essentially straight line the barrier so it doesn’t
feed crashed cars back onto the track as easily. It’ll also be adding gravel traps at La Source,
Blanchimont, Les Combes, Stavelot and - yep - Raidillon itself, though the
exact details of this are yet unrevealed. Gravel traps are interesting. Eau Rouge
used to have gravel traps as its run off, before the now-common long, tarmac run off.
Some ex-drivers have suggested putting gravel traps down there
again to psychologically slow the drivers down. The thing about tarmac run offs is there is a
lack of penalty for running wide. You push a bit too hard and exceed track limits and you just
keep running. No problem, no penalty. A gravel trap will mess you up. If you
run wide onto a gravel trap, you’ll at least be slowed down. You might also lose control, spin,
damage the underside of the car, muck up your tyres or even get completely beached and retired.
You don’t want to run wide onto a gravel trap. And if drivers KNOW that, they’ll have to
be more considered through Eau Rouge. That doesn’t mean not going flat out, but perhaps
measuring the risk and not taking the piss. Which is good in theory but I don’t know if I’m
convinced that would do much as… well we’ve seen grand prix drivers. In the reward/risk balance of
things, they’ll always greedily favour reward and push things too far if they think they need to.
Gravel traps will potentially slow down some accidents, but also add more risk of
flipping the cars or skittering them out of control, so there’s an interesting balance there.
In terms of the right hand side of Radillon, I don’t believe there’s anything major in the
works there. For now anyway. Hubert and Correa’s accident happened on this side,
of course, but for the most part the left hand side is the real concern.
Gravel here between the track and second pitlane will discourage this as a flat out escape area,
but will also create a risky speed difference between anyone caught in
the gravel vs those coming over the blind crest. So, careful decisions to be made in everything.
And Finally - there’s a very weird ongoing conversation about ‘danger’
being an intrinsic part of the sport with resistance whenever changes are made to
the cars and tracks to reduce acute risks. And we do need to talk about it, honestly.
It kind of goes along these lines: “The drivers know the risks - if
they didn’t want to deal with any danger, they should have taken up golf”
And also something like “Everyone’s a snowflake now and people need to stop being babies. We want
to see real risks and real heroes” The first is odd because… well,
they still do race. Drivers will complain about what they see as unacceptable safety standards
but they are still out there racing. But it doesn’t mean they can’t push for better safety.
I don’t really get why facing death and serious injury should be a necessary part of the job?
Why can’t just being a good driver be the main requirement and the risk be points
losses or damaged cars. Isn’t that enough? I’m not saying anyone can expect complete
sanitation - all sports have risk of injury one way or another,
but facing death or very serious injury shouldn’t be intrisic to the sport, especially when it’s
very avoidable and within its power. The “snowflake” lark is very silly
and often an insult people whip out when they don’t have anything thoughtful to say, honestly.
But I also don’t think most fans are here to bay and cheer at the potential for serious accidents.
Most of us are glad we don’t live in the 60s where drivers died with alarming frequency
and their colleagues were expected to suck it up and shrug it off or they
just weren’t made of the right stuff. Even in the last decade or so we’re
seen enough people die or be sidelined by nasty injury enough - especially if you watch something
like IndyCar - and it doesn’t get any less horrible with the waiting as ambulances sit on the
track and the growing realisation that something horrible has happened. Seeing the grieving and
shock of drivers’ friends, family and colleagues. I mean, just seeing fellow drivers and friends
of Anthoine Hubert remembering him two years on is still tough.
And it’s honestly kind of rough seeing people hashtagging for Anthoine or Bianchi with apparent
respect and sadness and reverence with one hand and calling everyone babies and snowflakes with
the other for pushing for better safety. Either you care or you don’t.
I may be weird, but I just don’t like people dying for my entertainment. It
sucks. And it sucks if there’s a big crash and you know the worst is a very real possibility.
I don’t know if you’re a real fan, honestly, if you need that to be happy watching.
But it’s an amazing feeling when so many walk away from high energy incidents
BECAUSE the work was done to protect them. I’m a bit on a soapbox here but it kind of
sucked spending the whole Belgian weekend watching accidents keep happening at that same corner,
knowing how bad the consequences could be, knowing drivers have been asking for changes.
And then there’s the whole concerning pattern with the FIA’s race direction in general which
feels riskier than it should be. But that’s for another time.