The 1966 Belgian Grand Prix was officially a John Surtees victory for Ferrari. In the longer history of Formula 1, it is also remembered as one of the races that helped turn Jackie Stewart from a fast young driver into the sport’s most persistent safety campaigner.
Held at the old Spa-Francorchamps on 12 June 1966, the race used the daunting 14-kilometre road circuit through the Ardennes. Spa was fast, exposed and lined by trees, houses, banks and ditches. It was a magnificent circuit in the same way a loaded mousetrap can be a fine piece of engineering. The trouble was that Formula 1 was still willing to race there in conditions that gave the drivers very little margin for error.
A violent opening lap
Rain hit parts of the circuit early in the race. On a lap that moved from dry road to sudden wet patches, several drivers crashed or spun. Jackie Stewart’s BRM left the road at high speed near the Masta section and hit a telegraph pole and a building before coming to rest badly damaged.
Stewart was trapped in the car, with fuel leaking around him. Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant, who had also gone off nearby, stopped to help. In an era before modern extraction teams, proper marshals’ equipment and trackside medical systems, rescue could depend on who happened to be standing nearby with the right tools. That is not a system. It is a hope with a clipboard.
Stewart later used the episode as part of his argument that Formula 1 had accepted danger too casually. He was not alone in thinking the sport was unsafe, but he became unusually direct and organised in saying so. His campaigning would make him unpopular with some promoters, officials and old-guard observers who preferred bravery when it did not require invoices.
Surtees wins for Ferrari
The race itself continued with a heavily reduced field. John Surtees had started from pole for Ferrari, while Jochen Rindt’s Cooper-Maserati was also quick enough to lead and challenge. Surtees eventually won by 42.1 seconds from Rindt, with Lorenzo Bandini third in the second Ferrari and one lap behind.
The result was significant in its own right. It was Surtees’s first championship Grand Prix victory since his 1964 title season and became his final Formula 1 win for Ferrari. Within weeks he left the Scuderia after a dispute around Ferrari’s Le Mans plans and team management, a split that has often been treated as one of Ferrari’s great self-inflicted wounds.
Historical placement
For Ferrari, Spa 1966 was a race victory at the start of the new three-litre formula. For Rindt, second place was an early sign of the speed that would later make him one of the sport’s most compelling drivers. For Stewart, the afternoon became part of a much larger argument about what grand prix racing owed its drivers.
The old Spa remained on the Formula 1 calendar for several more years, but its reputation was increasingly difficult to separate from the risks it carried. Stewart would go on to win three world championships, yet his influence on safety became almost as important as his results. The 1966 Belgian Grand Prix helps explain why. It showed a world-class driver, in a world championship race, being rescued by fellow competitors from a fuel-soaked wreck because the official arrangements were not good enough.
Reader signal