What is Eau Rouge? All about the iconic corner in the F1 Belgian GP

The Eau Rouge corner at the Spa-Francorchamps track is one of the most iconic corners in the F1 history.

Throughout the many interations of the circuit since its inception, the Eau Rouge and Radillion section has remained as the eye-catching feature. The corner is an uphill climb for the cars and drivers after they have made their way past the first corner of the track.

The corner is a blind uphill with a slight kink which leads to the Kemmel Straight. In the modern day F1 cars, the Eau Rouge corner is flat at seen speeds at around 280km/h regularly.

Recently the corner has garnered criticism for its dangerous exit which has led to some high profile in recent years and even few deaths of drivers such Anthoine Hubert in 2019 and Dilono van't Hoff in 2023.

F1 drivers divided over the dangers of the Eau Rouge corner ahead of the 2023 Belgian GP

Van't Hoff's death sparked fesh discussions about the dangers of the uphill sequence with drivers like Lance Stroll and Pierre Gasly asking for many changes while reigning double world champion Max Verstappen speaking against it.

As per RacingNews365, the Aston Martin F1 driver said:

"We need do something or we're playing with fire in a couple of weeks time again. Not just us, F2 kids, F3 kids, everyone who goes through that corner. Even if it's dry and someone loses a car, it's a blind corner, you hit the wall, come back in the middle the track, and a car comes at you 300-plus kph - you're toast. It's not fair what happened, that corner needs to be looked at and changed. We've lost two young talents in a span of five years.

While Max Verstappen gave a a different take and said:

"The changes they made in Spa, they definitely opened it up a lot more but it will always be a dangerous corner. But we are going to a lot of tracks where there are dangerous corners, where up until probably there is an accident, you won't say anything. Now of course it gets brought up, but I feel it's a bit unfair to just blame it on the track."

He continued:

"For sure Eau Rouge, going up, it is blind, but of course this accident happened later. The only thing that maybe can be improved there is to make more space in terms of trying to move the barriers more out, because at the moment, it looks like as soon as you crash, you hit the barrier, you bounce back onto the track quite easily."

Hopefully, we will be talking about the thrills of the Eau Rouge corner this weekend and not the dnager as F1 hosts the 2023 Belgian GP.