Five Things to Know About the 2025 Belgian GP

Formula 1 is back after a brief break for a racing double-header that starts with the Belgian GP this weekend.

The famed Spa-Francorchamps circuit is loved by fans and drivers alike, and there is a double helping of racing around the 7 km track, with Sprint returning.

Are you ready for the run through the Ardennes forest? We've got five things about the race to help you get set.

Spa represents the longest circuit on the current calendar, with the 7.004 km length some 800 metres longer than the nearest challenger, the 6.201 km Las Vegas Strip Circuit.

Yet that length is only half of the Belgian track's original layout, with the inaugural events in the 1920s coming on a Spa circuit that had just under 15 km of racetrack.

Although well admired today, the opening of the track didn't see so many people as excited. The planned maiden event was called off due to a lack of entries after only one driver signed up on the entry form.

The racers did come, though, and the long drive on the public roads between Francorchamps, Malmedy, and Stavelot saw high-speed running on a triangular layout.

The now-iconic look of Spa-Francorchamps we race on today eventually appeared in 1979 and has gone through many iterations to get to the circuit format Carbono will race on this weekend.

Williams Racing have quite the history at the Belgian GP, and we've stood on the top step of the podium four times over the years.

Interestingly enough, we've also taken nine pole positions in Belgium during our history, but only one Williams driver has converted that P1 start to a P1 finish.

Carlos Reutemann's 1981 victory at Zolder saw the Argentinian racer storm to pole by 0.85s, and he turned that into a P1 finish after 54 laps when the race was halted due to rain.

Carlos' teammate Alan Jones was the first Williams driver to take pole position one year earlier, but Alan lost out to Didier Pironi in the race.

Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Jacques Villeneuve, and Juan Pablo Montoya are the other Williams polesitters, but Nigel is the only one to win the Belgian GP for the team after a P5 start in 1986.

Damon Hill picked up the other two Williams wins in 1993 and 1994, with his first coming a fortnight after he secured his maiden F1 win in Hungary.

Long-time fans may be familiar with the memes surrounding the Eau Rouge and Raidillon sequence of turns that start a lap.

There is another point on the track that generates a little controversy over corner naming depending on who you speak to.

The left-hand Turn 9 that follows the Bruxelles hairpin ironically has some calling it "No Name" or "The Corner with No Name".

Others refer to it as Speaker's Corner, due to the public broadcast speaker tower that the corner passes.

More recently it has received the Jacky Ickx moniker, a two-time runner-up in the World Championship, though you might hear the commentators use any of the three names over a race.

There is only one predictable thing about the weather at Spa-Francorchamps, and that is how unpredictable it is.

Countless laps have had drivers having to navigate a track that is soaking wet in some sections and bone dry in others to make an already challenging lap even tougher.

Rain causing delayed race starts, safety car running, and red flags are all as possible as a simple sunny Sunday without a stoppage.

That's the story for this weekend too, with the chance of rain sitting around the 50% mark for all three days of action.

Only four Grand Prix events that feature in the 24-round 2025 calendar still remain from the maiden 1950 championship, and the Belgian GP is one of them.

Belgium, together with Monaco, Britain, and Italy, has lasted through 75 years of Formula 1 history, although with more stops and starts than the others.

Juan Manuel Fangio won that first event, and this weekend will represent the 70th running of the race.

Britain and Italy will jointly hold the title of most held Grands Prix by the end of this season with 76 events apiece. Monaco sits at 71 after missing a year due to Covid and having a four-year break from the championship between 1951 and 1954.