In 1925, the first Belgian Grand Prix was held at the very fast, 9-mile Spa-Francorchamps circuit located in the Ardennes region of eastern Belgium, about half an hour from Liege.

Going into Clubhouse corner, Seaman was pushing hard; he skidded off the rain-soaked road, hit a tree and his Mercedes caught fire.

1950 saw the introduction of the Formula One World Championship; the race was dominated by the Alfa Romeos of Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio and Italian Nino Farina.

Spa was located in a region where the weather was unpredictable; in many races there, while one part of the track was dry and had sunshine, another at the same time was soaking wet and it was raining there.

The nature of the circuit meant that cars spinning off could hit telegraph poles, houses, stone walls, embankments or trees.

The cylinder-shaped bodywork was made of very thin highly flammable magnesium or fibreglass, and the tube-frame chassis of that day offered little crash resistance (as opposed to a modern-day monocoque, pioneered by Lotus only a few years later).

Drivers in those days did not wear seatbelts – they found it preferable to be thrown from a car that might be on fire to reduce the chance of injury or death.

During practice, Stirling Moss, now driving a privately entered Lotus, had a wheel come off his car and he crashed heavily at the Burnenville right-hander.

The accident ended his racing career; he later successfully sued Lotus founder Colin Chapman in British court for sale of faulty machinery.

Bristow had never driven at Spa before, and was regarded as a brash and daring driver who had a reputation for being rather wild; the relatively inexperienced 22-year-old Englishman had been in many accidents during his short career.

Bristow and Mairesse touched wheels, and the Englishman lost control at Malmedy, overturned and crashed into an embankment on the right side of the track.

5 laps later, 26-year-old Briton Alan Stacey, running in sixth place and driving a works Lotus, suffered a freak accident when he was hit in the face by a bird on the Masta straight not far from where Bristow had been killed.

This year saw another rain-soaked race: on the first lap, as the field reached the far side of the circuit, a heavy rainstorm caused seven drivers to hydroplane off at Burnenville.

Briton Jackie Stewart had a high speed accident at the Masta Kink, where he went through a woodcutter's hut, hit a telegraph pole, and dropped into a much lower part of the circuit where the car landed upside down.

Briton Mike Parkes crashed heavily at 150 mph at Blanchimont after slipping on some oil that had dropped off of Jackie Stewart's BRM.

The European constructors, particularly Colin Chapman and Mauro Forghieri, were influenced by American Jim Hall's Chaparral 2E and 2F sports cars' very large high strutted wings.

Average lap speeds were past 150 mph (240 km/h), but the circuit still had virtually no safety features and as a result the race over the years was becoming less and less popular with the drivers.

When Jackie Stewart visited the circuit on behalf of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association he demanded many improvements to safety barriers and road surfaces, in order to make the track safe for racing.

[7] When the track owners did not want to pay for the safety improvements, the British, French and Italian teams withdrew from the event, and it was cancelled in early April.

But Spa was still too fast and too dangerous, and in 1971 the Belgian Grand Prix was cancelled, as the track was not up to mandatory FIA-mandated safety specs that year.

Following that decision, the Belgians decided to alternate their Grand Prix between Zolder in northern Belgium and a circuit at Nivelles-Baulers near Brussels.

The 1981 meeting was a chaotic event wrapped in the midst of the FISA–FOCA war and the poor conditions of the Zolder circuit, including its very narrow pitlane.

Then, when the field reached the pit straight again (by which time Luckett had been removed from the road, although the track still had Stohr's broken Arrows car on the circuit and the surface was littered with debris) a number of track marshals jumped onto the tarmac and frantically waved their arms to try to make the field stop while waving yellow flags instead of red flags.

Gilles Villeneuve died during practice at Zolder in 1982 after a collision with West German Jochen Mass going into the fast Butte corner.

Villeneuve's Ferrari flipped a number of times and the Canadian was thrown out of his car during the accident; he was severely injured and died during the night at a hospital near the circuit.

The Belgian Grand Prix returned to Zolder in 1984 and this was the last F1 race held at the Flemish circuit with Italian Michele Alboreto taking victory in a Ferrari.

In 1992 German Michael Schumacher won his first of 91 Grand Prix victories in a Benetton, a year after making his Formula 1 debut at the circuit.

1994 saw a chicane installed at the bottom of Eau Rouge in response to the deaths of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at Imola that year.

[9] Only eight drivers were classified finishers (two of whom were five laps behind, one of whom was Coulthard) and Damon Hill secured a victory ahead of his teammate Ralf Schumacher to record the Jordan team's first Formula One win.

In 2006, the FIA announced the Belgian Grand Prix would not be on the calendar, since the local authorities would not be able to complete major repair work at Spa-Francorchamps before the September race.