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One of the most difficult and demanding circuits on the calendar, few drivers have won more than three times here; Jim Clark won four consecutive victories, leaving his rivals far behind.
When the skies opened over the Ardennes in June 1963, the Belgian Grand Prix turned into a test of nerves rather than a simple speed race. Jim Clark, who had already won at Spa the previous year, took pole position in the downpour, then disappeared from view of his rivals, only to reappear lap after lap, overtaking all the other drivers as the rain pounded down on the 14-kilometer circuit. He finished the race in 2 hours and 27 minutes, five minutes ahead of Bruce McLaren, all while fighting with one hand against a broken gear lever, holding it in place as if it were a lifeline. Clark's dominance at Spa was no flash in the pan. In 1962, he started in fourth position and, on the eighth lap, took the lead, never looking back, to finish 44 seconds ahead of Graham Hill. The following year, despite a mechanical handicap, he turned the storm into a demonstration of his talent, a performance that journalist David Tremayne later described as “the quintessence of what made Clark, in my eyes, the best of the best.”
The 1964 edition proved that luck could be as capricious as the weather. Dan Gurney took pole position, while Clark qualified third on the starting grid. He spent the race alternating between second and fourth place, eventually finishing fourth on the final lap behind Hill, Gurney, and McLaren. The long straights at Spa pushed the engines to their limits; Gurney's engine gave up just as he was about to take second place, and Hill's fuel pump failed moments later. McLaren, now in the lead, seemed destined for victory until his battery gave out in the very last corner, handing the win to Clark by a narrow margin of three seconds.
A year later, Clark returned to the front of the grid, once again in pole position, and this time the race went off without any mechanical incidents. Neither rookie Jackie Stewart nor veteran McLaren could compete with the Lotus, and Clark crossed the finish line 44 seconds ahead of his Scottish compatriot, a full lap ahead of the New Zealander. This triumph confirmed a remarkable run of four consecutive victories at the Belgian Grand Prix, a feat no driver had ever achieved before.
However, this streak came to an end in the following seasons. In 1966, an engine failure forced Clark to retire on the first lap, and in 1967, despite another pole position, he collapsed during the race and finished a disappointing sixth. Nevertheless, his four victories at Spa remained a benchmark: he is still the only driver to have won the Belgian Grand Prix four times in a row. Although later legends surpassed his total (Ayrton Senna with five victories, Michael Schumacher with six), Clark's unbroken streak ranks alongside the achievements of Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Räikkönen, who have each equaled his record of four wins, and it appears to be a target for the current champion, Max Verstappen, who already has two wins and could well repeat the feat.
