The 29-year-old Gold Coast-based South Australian will contest a 25-hour endurance event for ‘Fun Cup’ cars at the famed Belgian venue.
Driving in a field of approximately 130 VW Beetle-bodied machines will be an unusual way to experience one of the most famous tracks on the current Formula 1 calendar.
But it’s a mission Hazelwood is looking forward to tackling alongside members of the TFH Racing team that he drives for in the Australian Trans Am Series.
“It’s my first time going over to Europe,” Hazelwood told Speedcafe before flying out of Australia.
“The furthest I’ve ever travelled in a plane is Brisbane to Perth, so I’m certainly in for a culture shock and experience.
“The whole opportunity has come about through TFH Racing. The [Thomas] brothers Josh and Diesel, they raced in the Fun Cup last year at Donington, which was a 12-hour event.
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“They saw the event on YouTube and said, ‘jeez, we’d love to go and do that’.
“That’s exactly what they did, and then they said ‘next year we’re going to do Spa’, and I managed to get the call-up to join the team.
“I’m obviously fairly invested with TFH Racing, helping with their Trans Ams and TA2 program and this is a cherry on top for the work involved.”
Hazelwood, whose duties with TFH included overseeing its TA2 efforts at Queensland Raceway last weekend, will share the Beetle with the Thomas brothers and Des Collier.
As evidenced in the below onboard video, the Fun Cup cars are capable of lapping the 7km Spa circuit in little under three minutes, topping out just shy of 200km/h on the Kemmel Straight.
“Preparation has been at an all-time low for me,” Hazelwood admitted.
“I don’t really know much about the cars themselves, other than the fact they’re a space frame chassis with a 1.8 Audi engine inside.
“It just sounds like a lot of fun. We’ve got an Italian team running the car for us, so we fly in, go straight to the track for practice, qualify and then do 25 hours of racing.
“The objective is just to finish, log some miles, have a few laughs along the way and see how we go.”
Describing the chance to race at Spa as “really special”, Hazelwood’s whirlwind Euro trip is also likely to include ticking off another bucket list race track.
“We’re going to try and sneak in a trip to the Nurburgring on the Monday as well to try and do some laps of the Green Hell in something,” he said.
“I don’t care if it’s in the hire car, we’ll be doing whatever we can to do some laps before flying back to Australia on Tuesday to get on with the duties I have here.”
Hazelwood is currently on track to defend his Trans Am Series title won with TFH Racing in 2024.
He’s also hoping to go back-to-back at the Bathurst 1000 alongside Brodie Kostecki, having switched to Dick Johnson Racing with the 2023 Supercars champion.
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