Report & Gallery: Spa Summer Classic 2025

Submitted by Marcel Hundscheid on May 9, 2025

By Marcel Hundscheid / Speed-O-Graphica

The historic motorsport season in Belgium started on the penultimate weekend of April with the Spa Summer Classic on the Spa-Francorchamps rollercoaster. The main race of the three-day event was again the Spa 3 Hours, an endurance race for GTs and touring cars until 1977. Motorsport Retro was on site to capture all the action for you.

Fifty registered teams competed in five different classes. The fastest was the Ginetta G4R of Danish combination Palle Birkelund-Pedersen and Alexander Weiss. Weiss drove the small GT to a time of 2:45.419 for pole position. On Sunday morning he resolutely took the lead in the race and quickly built up a comfortable margin. Weiss also regularly appears at the start of historic Formula 3 races in Europe, where he is often unbeatable.

The Ginetta has a big advantage in the three-hour, as it does not have to refuel, running a more efficient 1,720 cc Lotus twin cam. The Cobras and Porsches that were registered, for example, have to stop for extra fuel and that is the reason that we also saw them drop back in the rankings. In the second hour of the race team mate Pedersen took over the wheel and maintained the pair’s lead. The last stint saw the Ginetta back in the hands of a very fast Weiss, who had victory in sight.

However in the final phase the race was reset by a safety car. When the green flag was waved it was not clear where the point for overtaking was. When it turned out that the Jaguar of Rhea Sautter had passed too early, Weiss was given a drive through. At that point, he had built up a lead of twenty-eight seconds. The unplanned pit stop made it evaporate like snow in the sun. When Weiss returned to the track, he was thirty seconds behind.

With only seven laps left on the clock, Weiss did the almost impossible. He quickly closed in on the leading Lotus Elan of Ben Barker and Rory Butcher. In his hunt for the lead, he clocked a time of 2:44.877, the fastest lap of the race and a whopping 4.5 seconds faster than the Elan’s fastest time. After three hours of racing, Weiss crossed the finish line first with a lead of no less than 2 laps over the TVR of Connor Kay and Ben Kaisley. Ben Barker and Rory Butcher dropped to third place due to a broken differential.

Weiss and Pedersen put in an impressive performance as amateurs, leaving professional drivers such as Ben Barker and Rory Butcher in their wake. Until the moment when the Elan retired with mechanical problems, Weiss had by far the fastest lap of the race.

In addition to the Spa 3 Hours, the program was completed by the historic single-seaters of Monoposto Racing, the historic GTs and touring cars of the Belcar Historic Cup, Historic Championship ’65, Historic Championship ’81, Supersixties, Battle of the Dwarfs and the ETCC for 1,300 cc cars.

The first race of Historic Monoposto Racing ended after three laps with a red flag due to a crash between several drivers. Race control decided not to restart the race. This left only a single race on Sunday in which the FF2000 cars were the fastest. Victory went to Frank Färber with his Reynard SF84. In the Formula 3 cars, Bert du Toy van Hees took victory with his beautiful Martini Mk.42.

Nearly sixty cars graced the grid of the Belcar Historic Cup with a colorful collection of often iconic GTs and touring cars. Tom van Rompuy impressively drove away from the rest of the competition in the first race on Saturday. After half an hour of racing, he had a lead of more than 11 seconds with the Qvick Motors BMW E36 STW on the rest of the competition.

On Sunday, car owner Erik Qvick drove the second race and although he also faced no imminent threat from the rest of the opponents, Nick and Edgar Salewsky managed to close to within four seconds with a Porsche 911 RSR.

From Germany, the German Historic Automobile Championship was present with the series Historic Champioship ’65 and Historic Championship ’81. Two races of 25 minutes each were completed by HC ‘65, with the Ford GT40 of Pedro and Luco Sanchez crossing the finish line first during the race on Saturday. During the second on Sunday, however, it was Oliver Hartmann who had the edge in his Elva Mk.8.

On Sunday, the only race of HC ‘81 took place, which lasted 90 minutes. Here it was the Ford GT40 of Luco Sanchez and Michael Funke who convincingly claimed the overall victory with a lead of almost 2 minutes.

Dutch-based Super Sixties Racing also had a large grid of GTs and touring cars from the 60s on the rollercoaster in the Ardennes. Thanks to a good pit stop strategy, Laurent Jaspers grabbed victory in a Cobra Daytona during the first on Saturday. The second race of the weekend saw for Kennet Persson from Sweden in his Ford GT40 put in a dominant performance.

Finally, there were also competitions for the usually very smallest touring cars, represented by the Battle of the Dwarves and the 1,300 cc European Touring Car Challenge.

Thanks to Vincent Collard and his Roadbook organisation, the Spa Summer Classic has become a highlight for fans of historic motorsport. The 2026 edition is scheduled for just under 12 months.