The first Grand Prix to be staged in Belgium was held at the 8¾ mile (14km) Spa circuit in 1925. A race had been scheduled for 1914 but by then a different sort of battle was being fought on Belgian soil. The 1925 event was run under the title of the European Grand Prix but a low turn-out and a monotonous race was scarcely the best advert for European motor racing. In fact the day was memorable for just one reason – the most amazing display of arrogance by the Alfa Romeo team. If you can imagine Michael Schumacher prolonging a pit stop to tuck into a picnic, you’ll get the picture.
Twelve cars were supposed to take part but when the Sunbeams and Guyots scratched, that left four Delages against three Alfas. The Delage drivers were René Thomas, Robert Benoist, Albert Divo and Paul Torchy, while the Alfa team comprised Antonio Ascari, Giuseppe Campari and Count Gastone Brilli-Peri. There should have been everything to play for since, although the World Championship did not begin in earnest until 1950, a short-lived experiment did take place for manufacturers from 1925, and this was one of the races which counted, in company with the Indianapolis 500 and the French and Italian Grands Prix. The other innovation for the year was the abolition of riding mechanics in Grand Prix events. Most racing cars now became single-seaters.
Ascari led the way round the first lap from Campari, Benoist, Brilli-Peri, Divo, Torchy and Thomas but on the next Benoist dropped out with a split fuel tank. On lap four Torchy stopped for new plugs and retired soon after. The Delage misery deepened three laps later when Thomas’s car caught fire. He burnt his left hand trying to beat out the flames and retired. So after little more than 50 (80.5) of the 500 miles (805km), there were only four cars left running.
At half-distance Ascari was still showing the way to Campari, Divo and Brilli-Peri. It was hardly riveting entertainment for the Belgian crowd but it was to get much, much worse. For soon Brilli-Peri retired with a broken spring and Divo exited the race after making two long stops – one for tyres, the other for plugs. Now it was just the two Alfas. Round and round they went, separated by over a quarter of an hour. The crowd, partly disappointed at the lack of French involvement but even more disgruntled by the tedious procession, began to jeer and boo the Alfa drivers. Irked by this show of disapproval, Alfa team manager Vittorio Jano decided to rub in the Italian superiority by arranging for a sumptuous lunch to be laid out in the pits. Then, to a crescendo of boos and hisses, he called in his two drivers and they sat down to a leisurely meal while the mechanics polished the cars. The spectators could hardly believe their eyes.
Their stomachs satisfied, Ascari and Campari resumed the ‘race’, remaining in that order to the finish at which point Ascari was 22 minutes ahead of his team-mate. He had led from start to finish at an average speed of 74½mph (119.9km/h).
The joy of Ascari and Alfa was to be short-lived. He was killed in his next major event, the French Grand Prix, following which the Alfa cars withdrew from the race as a mark of respect. Alfa still won that inaugural World Constructors’ Championship (beating Duesenberg and Bugatti), but the season had been tarnished by the death of their star driver. It was all a far cry from that picnic in the pits at Spa.