Season Guide - Belgium - Hilton Racing

“There is no track on the calendar which tests a driver and rewards a driver so much as Spa,” says Ferrari’s Felipe Massa.The good news for fans who like driving, is the roads that lead to Spa are just as exciting – which makes sense as half of the track is made up of public roads.

The dedication of the drive into one of the most remote and picturesque corners of an otherwise crowded northern Europe is well worth it. It is not a hard drive either. Spa is almost equidistant – about 420kms - from Paris, London and Stuttgart.

I started my pilgrimage from London, stopping only for an overnight pit stop at the Conrad in Brussels. I could have slowed the trip down even more. Bruges, a former European Capital Of Culture, is a wonderful mix of canals and gothic architecture, art from the Old Masters and excellent food – including Belgium’s most famous flavour – chocolate.

Some of the F1 fraternity choose Brussels as their base, but true petrolheads prefer to remain closer to the action in the Ardennes mountains and every kilometre you get closer to Spa the more intense the anticipation and the F1 fever gets.

Spa, as the name suggests, is a spa town. For 51 weeks of the year, it is full with those more focused on water than fuel. It has been a lure for the health conscious for centuries but the modern incarnation of the spa is a wonderful chill out zone after the action at the track. The odds of finding an F1 driver alongside you in the thermal pools are high, especially in the days leading up to the race.

Spa’s other year-round lure is its Casino. Not as famous as the one in Monte Carlo, but it is the oldest in the world and it woos the high rollers who flock to the Grand Prix.

But the magic of Spa is the scenery. Ardennes is better known as a pâté than as a mountain range so many first-timers come unprepared for exploring the hills. The tourist office in town will guide you to mountain bike rental shops or stables from where you can hire a horse for a mountain trek.

If, like me, you end up in Spa by car and enjoy what used to be called ‘press-on’ driving, it is best to hang on for a day or two after the Grand Prix, when the roads will empty and you can tour the Ardennes in relative solitude.

Tackling the half of the track which is made of public highway is all the more exciting when you can see the tyre marks left by the F1 heroes on the previous Sunday.

It is nigh on impossible to play football on the hallowed turf at Old Trafford or Barcelona’s Nou Camp or hit balls on Centre Court at Wimbledon. But Spa, like Monaco, is one of those rare places where you can act out your sporting fantasies at a global sporting shrine.