On board video from Peter Dunn’s March 761 during the Historic Formula One Championship race at Spa Francorchamps on Sunday 26th April 2009.
On board video shot from Dan Collins car during the FIA Historic Formula One Championship race at Spa Francorchamps on Sunday 26th April 2009.
The video above is from both a forward looking camera mounted on the roll hoop and a rearward looking camera mounted on the gearbox (slightly tilted thanks to last minute, on the grid modifications!).
The first segment is from the forward camera and gives a good view of the first corner incident. Note that this camera is about 30cm above my eye line so you get to see things before I do! The second segment is from the rear camera and shows an exciting three abreast moment approaching Les Coombes.
La Source is one of those notorious first corners. A tight hairpin only a few hundred metres from the start. There is always a good chance that some incident will occur so my plan was to try and get to the outside of the circuit from my grid position on the inside of the track. You risk someone diving down the inside but I just felt something was going to happen.
Sure enough, Steve Hartley and Peter Meyrick had a coming together right in front of me but I managed to keep clear of Steve’s flying Arrows.
However, that allowed Rodrigo Gallego to nip past me and going through Eau Rouge, in a non-ground effect car, he was much slower than me. I had to back way off in the middle of the corner and that allowed Richard Eyre to get a run on me going up the hill to Les Coombes.
We had a “Hakkinen/Schumacher” moment as we both passed Rodrigo (or was it Ricardo Zonta?), one on either side but Richard had just that bit more momentum than me and I had to tuck in behind. I was much faster than Richard through Blanchiment so I thought I had a good chance at getting him back on the next lap but my engine decided otherwise and I slipped back through the field until the engine gave up on lap 4.