The WRT Belgian Audi Club team have just released this epic documentary on their journey to and through the Spa 24 Hours this year, that ended up with a second-place finish for one of their Audi R8 LMS Ultras. Covering the previous races in the Blancpain Endurance Series and the build-up to the 24 Hours during race week – including the amazing sight of dozens of GT cars running round the public roads of Spa on their way to the driver parade in town – the video takes you on an access-all-areas tour of the Spa 24 Hours.
Sometimes the most magical moments of Speedhunting come about completely by accident. Rod, Larry and I had been soaking up the legendary old Spa-Francorchamps track in Belgium, a 14km white-knuckle ride in a racing car – though thankfully less-so at a more sedate pace for our drive round the public roads that made up the [...]
I often think to myself ‘Why must connecting flights have terminals that are so damn far apart?’. I am not complaining, because I have found my dream job – I get to travel the world hunting speed. But sometimes the travel demands can be pretty tough, leaving me in a perpetual state of jet lag and disorientation. That [...]
There’s a reason why old racing tracks evoke such emotion in both drivers and spectators. It’s often down to the basic recipe that was used to create so many of them, using a concept diametrically opposite to the politics and over-planning involved in most modern track designs. The main premise was that these tracks were [...]
I cannot think of a motorsport event more fascinating than a twenty four hour race stuffed to the brim with GT cars. While spec racing can be entertaining, particularly for the drivers, I find it far more fun to see your favorite marques battling it out for hours. At the Total 24 hours of Spa [...]
The Spa 24 Hours is one of the most gruelling races on the calendar alongside the Nürburgring 24, and like the ‘Ring is held on one of the world’s legendary circuits. The Belgian WRT team won the race last year by just a lap from Edward Sandström’s BMW Z4; this year Edward switched across to [...]
A whole day has been sacrificed to the racing gods. They seem pretty happy. Hours and minutes have passed, billions of safety cars have circulated, but the surviving GT cars have crossed the line, with Audi once again victors at the Spa 24 Hours. The Speedhunters team are in small pieces, what sense we had [...]
The safety car is requiring as much mechanical attention as the race-cars at this years Spa 24 Hours – it’s been out on track almost as much as the GT cars. Those that survive that is: it’s been a race of attrition so far, with the weather and traffic mashing minds and cars. The rain [...]
I used to be afraid of the dark when I was a young boy, but now I prefer the dark, especially when photographing cars. There is no better way to have the ultimate control over light and the way it enters your camera. That is why I love endurance races. I can take my time [...]
The start of any race is always exciting; the rolling start of a race like the Spa 24 Hours, with the knowledge that the opening lap is just the first of many hundreds and that it’s the start of an epic day-long battle, just supercharges that feeling. The Circuit De Spa-Francorchamps provides some iconic view-points, [...]
The storm of activity on the track on Thursday was followed by a real storm on Friday that led to the cancellation of the planned Super Pole session. Rather than the one-by-one, driver-against-the-clock format, this meant that the combined result from the two main Qualifying sessions would be used to set the grid for Saturday’s [...]
Aging is a an unavoidable, albeit occasionally depressing, part of life. With age comes many great things, wisdom for starters, but somewhere along the way we often seem to forget how to have fun. Every passing year marks further separation from our former selves. But try as it might, there are some things that our [...]
Getting to drive through Eau Rouge, Spa’s legendary mountain-come-corner, once in a lifetime is a dream for most people. 250-odd GT drivers are about to get the chance to tackle Eau Rouge over 500 times through the day, night and day again this coming weekend during the Spa 24 Hours. The extra challenge is that [...]
We’re in the build-up to this weekend’s running of the Spa 24 Hours – the next stop in the marathon of round-the-clock races held over the summer. Almost 70 cars from 12 marques will be taking part in what is also the fourth round of the 2012 Blancpain Endurance Series. The Speedhunters team will be out in force at the race, and we’ll have a full preview up in the coming days. The race has a rich heritage: it’s just a year younger than its French cousin, Le Mans, with the first race held on roads around the Ardennes forests in 1924. The 24 Hours was held regularly up until the Second World War, and after a post-war stutter the it was rekindled in the early ’60s as a regular event, still held over the track’s original long lap.
I used to dream of living in Los Angeles. I was in my early twenties at the time, filled to the brim with raw ambition and perhaps too much self-belief for my own good. I had already achieved some moderate in-roads as a music video director in my native Canada. However, being born without the [...]
