Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. It is where Jeremy Clarkson almost shat his pants in the P1, and it is also where the infamous Eau Rouge uphill corner is. But aside from those two, the circuit recently got a lot of attention as Koenigsegg took their One:1 for a spin around the 7-kilometre race track and at the same time setting a whole new lap record for production cars.
But the journey to the top was not straight forward for them as there are numerous challenges faced by the Koenigsegg team to clock a lap record at Spa. During the first day of their outing which they used as a practice session, the track had a noise limit of 110dB which did not really put a halt on the One:1’s advance. On Day 2 however, the noise limit was lowered to 103dB and that is where the problem starts.
Since the on-site team realized that the noise limit was a real threat for the One:1 to reach its real potential, they quickly made some adjustments on the morning of day 2 in hoping of keeping the noise below 103dB. Unfortunately while attempting to do a lap at full throttle, the dB alarm went off and they were waved in by the marshals.
It may sound like their attempt ended prematurely, but Koenigsegg actually managed to break the lap record during practice – on old tires! The 2:32.14 recorded is six seconds faster than the P1 and about eight seconds faster than Porsche’s 918 Spyder.
One thing that is certain though, this is not going to be the last time for Koenigsegg in assaulting the Spa-Francorchamps as they hope to have another chance to run the One:1 at Spa again in the near future and meet their full potential.
