The Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix runs this weekend, 17-19 July, at the greatest circuit on the calendar. We will not be settling that argument here - we have a different question. PitStopper eats GPX and FIT routes for breakfast, and a racetrack is, structurally speaking, just a very opinionated 7 km loop. So we loaded the Spa-Francorchamps lap itself - a FIT course file, La Source to Bus Stop - and asked what OpenStreetMap knows about the kilometre either side of it.
The answer: rather a lot. Belgium's mappers have surveyed this circuit like it's national infrastructure. Which, arguably, it is.
The tunnels are the fan's secret weapon
The single most useful thing on the map for a race-goer: seventeen mapped tunnels cross under the circuit, and OSM has them all - because on race weekend, the only way from the outside banks to the infield is underneath the track. Nine of them are walkable, and PitStopper pinned each one to the lap like any other POI:
| Tunnel | On the lap at | Off the line |
|---|---|---|
| Tunnel1 / Tunnel2 (start straight) | km 0.0 | 73-78 m |
| Tunnel3 (La Source) | km 0.3 | 42 m |
| Tunnel4 / Tunnel de Ster (Raidillon approach) | km 0.8 | 22-25 m |
| Tunnel Raidillon | km 1.0 | 15 m |
| Mid-circuit tunnel (Les Combes side) | km 2.7 | 26 m |
| Tunnel de Blanchimont | km 5.1 | 8 m |
| Tunnel5 (Stavelot side) | km 5.7 | 11 m |
Read the Raidillon row again: there is a pedestrian tunnel fifteen metres from the racing line at Raidillon. On Sunday afternoon, cars will pass over the heads of walking fans at three hundred and something km/h, flat out, uphill. No other sport lets you stand that close to the physics.
The other eight tunnels are not for people at all: they belong to the l'Eau Rouge stream and its Rohon tributary, which duck under the racing line again and again on their way down the valley. The circuit is built over a river - the same river that hands its name to the most famous corner in motorsport.
The spectator plumbing is mapped
This is the part that genuinely surprised us: the circuit's own spectator taps and toilets are in OpenStreetMap - eight toilet blocks (27-67 metres off the lap) and seven drinking-water points (43-84 metres), clustered exactly where the general-admission banks are. Tick nothing but Drinking Water and the lap draws its own refill plan:
On a hot July race day with 100,000 people on the hillsides, "where is the nearest tap" is not a trivial question, and the answer is: pinned to the lap, exportable to your watch.
The car parks are mapped with equal devotion - 21 of them, including a full rainbow of officially colour-coded paddocks: Bleu, Brun, Rouge, Jaune, Vert, Violet and Orange, plus P1, P2 and P4-5-6 up the hill. And should you arrive with an empty tank, there is a Total station on Route du Circuit whose OSM name is simply "Total Spa-Circuit" - 102 metres from the lap.
Sleeping at Eau Rouge
Camping P3 sits hard against the circuit, 342 metres from the lap - which explains the tent city visible in every aerial shot of race weekend. And for those whose budget survived the ticket purchase, the map offers one of motorsport's great addresses:
The Hôtel de la Source, 22 Route du Circuit - 306 metres from the start straight, overlooking the Eau Rouge complex. The popup politely notes "You pass here: Outbound 366m - Return 6.98km", because on a loop, everything is passed twice; even PitStopper's out-and-back logic gets a work-out from a racetrack.
The frites paradox
Here is the one genuinely useful warning in all this: within a kilometre of the lap there is precisely one bar (out by Blanchimont, 40 m off the line), and zero cafés, restaurants or takeaways. The circuit sits in Ardennes forest; the fan food is all race-weekend concessions that OSM sensibly doesn't map. The nearest permanent establishments are down in Francorchamps village - Le Roannay (the old grand-prix haunt, 1.3 km), Le Relais de Pommard (1.1 km), Café Bertrand and a friterie (1.7 km). Budget accordingly: on race day, it's circuit frites or a walk.
Why we did this
Partly because the Grand Prix is this weekend and we couldn't resist. But mostly because it makes a nice point: PitStopper doesn't care whether your route is a coast path, a 1,000 km ultra, or the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps - a route is a route, FIT or GPX, and the OpenStreetMap layer around it is often far richer than you'd guess. If your event has spectators, marshals, or a support crew wandering the venue, load the course and see what the mappers have left for you.
Enjoy the race. May your favourite driver survive Eau Rouge lap one.
Header photo by Chris Kursikowski on Unsplash. Circuit facilities data © OpenStreetMap contributors, July 2026 - race-weekend arrangements (closures, one-way systems, which tunnels are open) are the organiser's word, not the map's. Lap distances measured from the start/finish line.
