ÜFull throttle for over 20 seconds. It starts after the first corner. Through the depression, through the Eau Rouge, up the mountain with an 18 percent gradient. After the crest, keep your foot on the accelerator. Formula 1 drivers take one of the most legendary sections of the racing circuit. Daring, daring – a test of courage at Spa-Francorchamps.
But the course also harbors the horror of motorsport. 35 years ago on September 1, 1985, after an accident in the Eau Rouge, Stefan Bellof died in a sports car race at the age of 27. A year ago on August 31, 2019, the 22-year-old French Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert lost his life in a horror accident after the Eau Rouge.
“That was a low point in the career of everyone who was there last year,” said Formula 1 driver Sebastian Vettel at the Belgian Grand Prix. “It’s going to take even more to achieve our best performance here, but once you’re in the car you have to think of other things. That makes it a bit easier, you’re more likely to be distracted. ”Race driver displacement.
But it is difficult for everyone in the Ardennes these days to talk about what happened a year ago. Above all, Juan Manuel Correa. The 21-year-old American with roots in Ecuador has returned to the place that ended Hubert’s life so suddenly and changed that of Correa so radically. He had crashed into Hubert’s car, which had already crashed, with his racing car. A rubble field. Hubert died, Correa was seriously injured.
“At first I fought for survival, then it was a fight for my right leg.” He still wears a metal frame around his right lower leg. He hopes to get rid of it by the end of the year. Then he wants to go back to the racing car. He is aiming for his racing comeback in the coming year. The accident at the time definitely scared him, he said in Spa-Francorchamps. The crash did not take away his passion. Racing driver requirement.
The injured Correa was pushed to the scene of the accident in a wheelchair.
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Image: Reuters
“To be honest, you forget it quickly,” said Formula 1 driver Kevin Magnussen. At Spa in 2016, he lost control of his car at the exit of the Eau Rouge and hit the back of the tire hard. “Nothing had happened,” he said looking back.
Correa will never forget the accident. Not even the period of suffering afterwards. “I was in constant pain for four months. I was on heavy medication, was like a robot. I no longer had any sensations and slept maybe an hour or two in that time, ”said Correa. “And the hardest part was accepting it when I woke up from the coma. It was like you were in a nightmare. We always think in the scene that such an accident cannot happen. “
It happened. And a year later all memories came back. At the point where Hubert had had an accident, his good friend Pierre Gasly laid down flowers. “Unfortunately, that’s the danger in our sport. But it’s hard to accept, ”said the French Formula 1 driver from Alpha Tauri. Before the start of the Formula 2 race on Saturday there was a minute’s silence for Hubert.
Correa had her wheelchair pushed up the Eau Rouge to pause at the place of horror. It was still difficult for him to talk about Hubert, he said. “He was such a positive person,” recalled Correa, who may be back on the accelerator pedal again after the first course on the Ardennes circuit in a year, through the Eau and then up the mountain. And like all the pilots on the course, his gaze is directed at the sky.
The Frenchman Anthoine Hubert died in the wreck of his car in 2019.
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Image: dpa
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