From 1962 to 1965 I lived in Liege where my father was the Italian Consul General. There was a huge Italian population in the Liege area – most of them immigrant workers employed in the coal mines and steel mills. I was at boarding school in the UK so I only came home for the school holidays. As a result I was never able to watch the Belgian GP or the Motorcycle GP as they were held during school terms.
First lap at Spa-Francorchamps (1963/64) – Lancia Flavia 1500 – the paddock has changed a bit since!
At the time there were only about 3 or 4 meetings a year at Francorchamps as the roads were public – there was no motorway to divert traffic. The 24 hour race became the big annual event for Belgian drivers, I suppose it was one of the only chances they had to race there – it was a bit like the Mille Miglia had been in Italy – everybody had to do it, and of course with a big field and two or three drivers per car, a lot of people got their chance. But sometimes with tragic consequences.
In the programme for the 1963 Belgian Grand Prix, the announcement was made that the RACB would hold a 24 hour race for Touring cars in July 1964. The 1964 Belgian GP itself would be held in June and would be the third Grand Prix after those of Monaco and Holland. The public was also reminded about the G.P. de Spa, which was the sports car event to be held in May, as well as the Tour de France which would be visiting the “National” circuit in September 1963.
Thus in July 1964 (I was 15 at the time) I was finally able to watch a race at Francorchamps.
My father, through his contacts, was able to get passes and grandstand tickets and we were allowed to park just behind the club house on the inside of La Source, about where the F1 pit complex is now. My father and I decided we were going to watch the whole race and sleep in the car. In fact once our car was inside the circuit that was it, we had no choice, as it was impossible to take the car out, the only exit being at La Source and involved driving across the track (just like Mallory Park!).
Before the race we met all the Italian teams –Alfa Romeo was there (the works team plus the private Jolly Club) also Lancia (with Flavia Zagato Sports run by Fiorio, the father of Cesare). Alfa Romeo and Jolly Club ran Giulia TI Super’s. The Lancia team was called HF Squadra Corsa (in Italian “Acca Effe” - High Fidelity – and the team badge included a row of little red elephants – why this was I don’t know, but I am sure lots of you do..). The Lancia drivers included the Frescobaldi brothers, Piero and Ferdinando, members of an aristocratic family from Tuscany. There were also Lancia Flaminia’s (the Pininfarina coupe, not the Zagato version), one of which was driven by an Italian lady driver (from Rome I think), Ada Pace.
We watched the start of the race from the grandstand, and I took a few pictures also from inside La Source – not very good unfortunately as I think the camera must have sprung open at some stage so the negatives were spoilt. Sir John Whitmore was the early leader in a Lotus Cortina – another Cortina was driven by the up and coming, and still very young, Belgian driver, Jacky Ickx. They all dropped out however after a few hours and the race became a battle between BMW (1800 Tii) and Mercedes (300 I think). The top Mercedes driver was the great Eugene Bohringer.
We slept, as planned, in the car and were woken early in the morning by the loudspeaker asking my father to go to race control (in the Club House just next to us). When he came back he brought the sad news that one of the Frescobaldi brothers, Piero, had been killed during the night. Race Control needed to contact the Italian Consul and had called home in Liege where my mother replied that the Italian Consul was already at the track sleeping in the back of a Lancia Flavia parked under their windows. My father spent the rest of the race busy organising things. In the official race programme which he kept and which I now have there are his notes – including the draft of the telegram he needed to send to the Foreign Office in Rome to arrange for the repatriation of the driver’s corpse. He also had to arrange for the eldest brother to travel urgently to Belgium. This brother was the current Count Frescobaldi and happened to be a former boy friend of Princess Paola of Liege, who was of Italian origin. This apparently made getting the visa a delicate matter!
I went back to the grandstand to follow the rest of the race. This was quite exciting as it was basically a battle between a BMW and the two works Mercedes Benz. The three cars were very close but Bohringer had some mechanical problem and had to pit unexpectedly, letting Aaltonen and Hahne in the BMW past. Something then happened to this car and finally the other Mercedes won. At the time it was rather confusing to follow.
Change of leader a few hours from the end – the leading Mercedes (perhaps Bohringer looking on by the rear door) is in the pits as the BMW rushes by
After the race we left the track and my father drove me to the hotel just up the road, where the Lancia team had been staying. While he had more paperwork to do he asked me to go up to Frescobaldi’s room and wait there with the other Frescobaldi brother, Ferdinando, until he came to fetch me.
This was as you can imagine rather a difficult moment for a 15 year old boy – it was one thing to read about a driver being killed (it seemed to happen rather often) but it was another thing to be thrust right into the drama. I did not know what to say to Frescobaldi, and anyway my Italian was not very good, but Frescobaldi was perfectly charming and it seemed more that he was trying to find a way to console me rather than the other way around. He asked me who had won the race, and of course I tried to explain and I think I got it wrong and said it was the BMW when in fact it was the Mercedes – anyway I felt very embarrassed and quite relieved to get away!
Piero Frescobaldi’s accident was never really explained, and various theories abounded, such as a wild deer running across the track in front of him. In a way it was rather similar to Alberto Ascari’s accident at Monza in 1955. The two brothers were going extremely well, in fact I can see from my father’s notes in the programme that at 6.30 pm they had been lying 7th overall, just behind the eventual winner and ahead of the eventual third place car (a 2600 cc Alfa Coupe). I don’t think that any of the drivers wore belts at the time (the rules state that cars had to be equipped with seat belt attachment points, but that belts were not mandatory). If you left the road your fate was in the hands of the gods...
Works Lancia Flaminia sits sadly in the paddock – possibly withdrawn in respect – this one was driven by Pascal Ickx and Georges Harris