Spa-Francochamps doesn’t have much in the way of signage pointing the way to the circuit; instead there’s a racing car silhouette logo’d on to the road signs dotted around the region. Cock your head and it looks a little bit like one of those really cool 1970s F2 cars: all squat and powerful. At least it does here. Anywhere else and it would just look like the generic clipart racing car it probably is – but Spa has the strange capacity to bring out the dewy-eyed faux-nostalgia in even the most flinty-eyed.

This morning, the journey into the circuit, down the hill from the centre of Francorchamp was brilliant. The sun was shining, the sky blue and the village was still, apart from the occasional hausfrau returning from the bakery with fresh bread, and a gardener clipping another millimetre off an already perfect hedge. It had the sort of pastoral serenity that inspires wet poets to sit down and write about flowers.

Of course, it’s all about to explode. Come tomorrow the place will degenerate into a noisy, heaving pit of happy, loud fans and happier, wealthier restauranteurs as roughly half the population of Europe descends upon the village, bringing chaos in their wake.

There was a taste of what’s to come in the pitlane this afternoon. The crowd of spectators eager to get a look in the garages didn’t so much stand in the pitlane as commandeer it. You couldn’t move outside the garage – even hardened photographers, skilled in the art of pushing and shoving as thought their lives depended on it, were retreating into the Paddock.

Anywhere else it would give rise to all sorts of grumbling, but in the shadow of Eau Rouge it’s treated as a cheery, life-affirming, distraction. It’s just what happens at Spa. Of course the same is true at Monaco – but without the beer and crepes. With talk of some races suffering a downturn in numbers, the impression from wandering around Francorchamps is that such a thing couldn’t possibly happen here.

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