The Legend Boucles @ Bastogne 2025 are packed with new features

The masterminds behind the Royal Automobile Club de Spa brought together the media and a host of VIPs at the ANDES Motorsport facilities in Barvaux on Tuesday October 22 to unveil the 2025 edition of the Legend Boucles @ Bastogne, scheduled for Saturday February 1 and Sunday February 2. As they say in such cases, if you don't move forward, you move back...

The years go by, the editions of the Legend Boucles @ Bastogne pass by, and in the ranks of the organising R.A.C. Spa, the desire to do things right and to adapt to changing customs and wishes is more present than ever. That's why Pierre Delettre and his team have reviewed the main new features for next year's event, some of them logical and common sense, others more surprising...

Let's start with the route, which will undergo some major changes,’ says the organiser of the Legend Boucles @ Bastogne. On Saturday, 4 different special stages (regularity tests) will be on the menu. That's fewer than in the past, but one of the sections will be 25 kilometres long and will be run twice. The same goes for Sunday, with a 30-kilometre stage! This means that the event will actually be longer than this year. So competitors won't be losing out at all, quite the contrary...’.

While the Legend Boucles @ Bastogne were characterised by an asphalt stage on Saturday and a gravel stage on Sunday, this concept is also evolving... ‘We are now offering an event that can be described as mixed,’ continues Pierre Delettre. We're now offering what can best be described as a mixed event,’ continues Pierre Delettre. Saturday's route will include sections on good gravel, while Sunday will feature two asphalt stages. One of the objectives is clearly to avoid the appearance of cars in ‘full gravel’ configuration on Sunday, by favouring instead a compromise which generally proves less costly. In addition, the gravel stages will be real forest stages. We're therefore abandoning the paths along the edges of the fields, which were sometimes more brittle.

From a sporting point of view, the main change is the disappearance of the notion of ‘Target Time’ which has prevailed in recent years in the ‘Legend’ and ‘Youngtimers’ categories. This is to avoid distorting the result with penalties that are sometimes too high on certain sections,’ explains Eric Chapa, who is in charge of the route and sports management. So we're going to give priority to a time that will be converted into points. Any coefficient will be applied to the number of points. In addition, penalties for failing to respect the Slow Zones, which are still on the programme for safety reasons, will be halved compared to what we had until last February.

Cars competing in the ‘Legend’ categoriy will now be divided into 9 different divisions, according to age and propulsion system, with coefficients ranging from 0.8 to 1.1. The former ‘Youngtimers’ category has been merged into the ‘Legend’ section, which has been extended to 2000, with the addition of new eligible cars, as recently specified by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile.

Finally, a new category has been added... ’ It all started as an April fool's joke launched by our dear press officer on his website... which ended up becoming reality,’ continues Pierre Delettre. In the heart of a region whose history has been marked above all by the Battle of the Bulge, the 80th anniversary of which we are celebrating, having Willys Jeeps on the road might seem a bit far-fetched! But when you think about it, the idea may not have been as far-fetched as it seemed! We talked about it, we sounded out the RACB Sport, and here we are! A ‘Tribute Battle of the Bulge’ category has been created. It will welcome a handful of Willys - and only Willys - who will compete in certain RTs at an average speed of 30 km/h! A number of interested parties have already come forward, and as this new feature is totally in tune with Bastogne, we're looking forward to welcoming these atypical crews at the start... ’

There's no doubt about it, the 2025 Legend Boucles @ Bastogne will be the talk of the town! And while the brand new Ford Escort Mk2 Gr.4, the future star of the race, was officially presented on Wednesday, you'll have to wait until Friday November 1 to register via the event's official website.