1968 Belgian Grand Prix

Championship standings

Hill leads the championship strongly after winning both Spain and Monaco. His fourth Monaco victory broke Stirling Moss’s record for wins at the principality.

Previous race

Hill dominated Monaco from pole position, the only car on the lead lap at the finish. Richard Attwood, in the BRM works car on his first appearance for the team, finished just two seconds behind and took fastest lap — the only podium of his Formula One career. Lucien Bianchi was third for Cooper, also his only podium. Only five cars were classified at the finish after a race of near-constant attrition; Jochen Rindt crashed while trying to pass Surtees, and Servoz-Gavin’s driveshaft failed from the lead on lap three.

Between-race developments

Ludovico Scarfiotti is not available for Belgium. The Italian is committed to the European Hillclimb Championship event at Rossfeld in southern Germany and Lucien Bianchi remains at Cooper in his place. Brian Redman, who finished third in Spain, is also out — racing for Gulf John Wyer at the Spa 1000 km sportscar race this weekend. Jackie Stewart returns to action after missing Spain and Monaco with his wrist injury. Dan Gurney and Denny Hulme have flown back from Indianapolis, where they finished second and fourth respectively in the 500.

Entrants

Ferrari returns after missing Monaco. Following Lotus’s introduction of wings at Monaco, Ferrari has fitted Chris Amon’s car with a strut-mounted negative-incidence rear wing for Belgium — the first such device to appear on a Ferrari. Amon claimed during qualifying to have been running similar lap times without the wing, but he was four seconds faster than the next car. Ackx’s Ferrari runs without wings. Brabham has also added a rear wing to Jack Brabham’s car with nose dive-planes. Several other teams arrive with experimental wing configurations.

Practice

Amon took pole at an average speed of more than 240 km/h around the unprotected rural road circuit of Spa-Francorchamps — a remarkable average even by the standards of the time. Stewart and Ickx line up alongside him on the front row. Both Lotus drivers encountered mechanical trouble during qualifying and start from the penultimate row.