There is a lot of excitment for the 2022 edition of the Belgian Formula 1 Grand Prix, in the hope that this event does not lose its place on the 2023 calendar of the World Championship. Last season, the race was practically canceled due to the weather conditions: heavy rain did not allow the Formula 1 drivers to go beyond a few laps carried out behind the Safety Car. The summer break and the desire to see the Formula 1 drivers compete again on one of the most beautiful circuits in the world are therefore amplified, without omitting the curiosity to evaluate the performance of the new ground-effect cars on the very fast corners of Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.
The track that winds through the Ardennes forest has also got a new look by adding gravel in four corners, a return to the past that will surely please both the fans as well as the drivers. Spa-Francorchamps, in fact, hosted the 24 hours of the EWC, the Endurance World Championship in motorbike racing, for this reason the introduction of gravel was necessary in several places to make some asphalted escape routes that were not very extended.
Outside La Source, for example, this year there will be gravel and therefore the drivers will not be able to exploit the track beyond the white line as always happens at the start or on other occasions in which the drivers find themselves dueling wheel-to-wheel in the grapple to the right which coincides with the first corner of the track. The floods of last autumn made it necessary to intervene even in the most iconic section of the Belgian track, namely the Eau Rouge-Raidillon climb with left, right and left corners that the Formula 1 cars were taking in full.
This may not be the case anymore. The initial left-hand bend was accentuated, while the bumps that made the drivers complain in the past editions were smoothed out: “A rush of adrenaline” – said professional racetrack designer Jarno Zaffelli, one of the people in charge of the Italian company Dromo – “We intervened to fix the damage caused by the floods last autumn and we have reduced the bumps, but ensuring that the most iconic corner in motorsport retains its unique character” – he explained.
“In the design and the further developments, we took into consideration the new regulations and the new tyres,” he added – “We had like 20+ iterations of Eau Rouge. We spent several days with professional drivers in our in-house simulators to get their feedback. We spent then two full days with professional drivers in Vi-Grade sim centre, supervised by Thierry Boutsen and Emanuele Pirro. Between October and November 2021 the work was then fine-tuned in the simulators for F1 and GT cars with Marco Bonanomi, to get their feedback. This work helped us a lot to choose the final design that was then submitted to the FIA Circuit Commission prior to the works that were carried out in the first months of the 2022 season. In addition, we had our internal analysis of the circuit, a LIDAR scan of the area, and then a complete analysis to finalise all the details.” – he concluded.
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