Lance Stroll has called for changes to be made to the circuit at Spa-Francorchamps after the death of Formula Regional driver Dilano Van ‘T Hoff on Saturday morning.
Van ’T Hoff was killed during the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine (FRECA) second race at Spa, after crashing on the Kemmel Straight in wet conditions with spray affecting visibility. After incidents nearer the exit of Raidillon, the 18-year-old’s car came to a rest at a right-angle to the racing line and was struck at high speed in similar fashion to the crash that claimed the life of Anthoine Hubert at Spa in Formula 2 in 2019.
With both crashes occurring within a few hundred meters of each other, and multiple serious incidents in the same area, Stroll said following F1’s sprint race in Austria that the iconic Belgian circuit has to make changes.
“Story of the race isn’t today,” Stroll said. “We lost a young driver at Spa today, my thoughts are with him and his family. It’s not fair what happened, and that corner needs to be looked at and changed, because we lost two young talents in like five years — it needs to be changed.
“We’re going there in a few weeks — it’s horrible what happened today. We lost a member of the racing family, and seriously need to think about what to do with that corner as it’s never fun going through there. Every time we go through there we put our lives on the line; today we saw something bad happen. It’s not right.”
Stroll says talks have taken place before about trying to find ways of making the Eau Rouge and Raidillon section safer but action hasn’t followed quickly enough.
“Yeah we’ve discussed it but then it blows over — it needs to be changed,” he insisted. “They need to do something. You know, playing with fire, in a couple of weeks time, again, and not just us — F2 kids, F3 kids, everyone goes through that corner.
“We’re losing lives in that corner, it has to change. For me it’s not even a discussion.”
Pierre Gasly admitted he also has faced times he hasn’t felt safe racing through that section of track in difficult conditions.
“It does feel risky,” Gasly said. “The thing is it kinds of reminds me of situations I’ve been in the younger categories in Spa, in similar conditions, and being fully honest, there were times I did feel in massive danger just with poor visibility and various situations where it just feels pretty unsafe. But I don’t know exactly what happened.
“We do a risky sport, which is always going to remain risky whatever we do with the speed that we go at. It definitely needs a very deep investigation.”