ON
TRACK WITH RICK PEARSON
By Rick Pearson
Welcome to the eleventh of my weekly articles about the National racing scene and my journey through it over the past few years. This week, I want to talk about racing abroad, otherwise known as "Welcome to Spa, a circuit murderouse".
A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to race abroad with my Caterham in an invitation race organised by the Belgian Caterham Importer at the world famous Spa- Francorchamps circuit, home of the Belgian Grand Prix and regarded as one of the finest drivers tracks in the world.
Having arrived at dawn and since the majority of the circuit is normal public roads; the opportunity to pop in a few cheeky laps in the road car was just too good to be missed... Whilst it was valuable to learn the track, this little jaunt didn't do my confidence the world of good when I was passed round the outside by a Citroen Berlingo Van (white!) through one of the twistier sections of the track!
Signing-on was unremarkable apart from the requirement to pop the stickers of some mysterious Belgian sponsor on the cars and as we walked into the drivers briefing, everyone was in a holiday mood and the atmosphere was pretty jovial. This atmosphere was to be quickly quelled by the Clerk of the Course: a somewhat large gentleman with a very small, fluffy mustache for whom the climb to second floor briefing room had been a near death experience if his sweating and wheezing was anything to go by!
His briefing was an object lesson in intimidation, the opening line killing our good humour stone dead and replacing it with trepidation: "Welcome to Spa" he started, "Spa is a circuit murderouse, I will not translate that as I think you understand..." Thanks! Now he had our undivided attention. This appeared to be the aim since he had some interesting things to say about flag signals. Because Spa is a very long circuit (over 4 miles), in order to have an orderly race meeting, stopping sessions and races is not really encouraged.Not least because if you hang out the red flags at the start/finish line the field has to trundle around the entire lap at low speed and won't be back in the pits for some 5 minutes! Our friendly Belgian Clerk of the Course was keen to impress this...
"If you crash, and your car is off the circuit, and you are OK...(big pause for effect) I will not stop the race. If you crash, and your car is on the circuit, but off the racing line, and you are OK...(big pause for effect) I will not stop the race. If you crash, and your car is on the racing line, but the circuit is not blocked and you are OK...(big pause for effect) I will not stop the race. So if I hang out the yellow flags you have no idea what I might have left on the circuit around the next corner; may I suggest you slow down ...(big pause for effect) a lot?"
After the British circuit practice of stopping a race for virtually any excuse this came as a little bit of a shock, and if we were ready to respect the flag signals more than usual after this, the happenings of that afternoon were to reassure us he was not kidding: Two Renault Meganes from the Italian championship had a coming together in their race while cresting the brow of Eau Rouge (more of which later). Both went into the wall, one bouncing back to be half on the racing line whereupon it promptly caught fire! The drivers bailed out unharmed and the Megane burned gently whilst the race went on around it and the marshal who every now and then wandered onto the track to empty another fire extinguisher in the general direction of the wreckage.
The race went the full distance, the Megane was never going anywhere again. It was a very responsible (?!?) set of Caterham drivers that took to the Spa track for the first time.
Next I'll talk about driving and racing on the Belgian Grand Prix track.