1988 Formula One World Championship finished in 7th place, one lap behind his former British Formula 3 rival Senna. Two weeks before the Belgian Grand Prix, Formula One lost its best known and one of its most loved people. Enzo Ferrari, the founding father of Ferrari and its F1 team Scuderia Ferrari, died on 14 August at the age of 90. In the first race since the death of their teams founder, Berger and Alboreto qualified 3rd and 4th respectively with Alboreto being the fastest through the speed trap on the Kemmel Straight at . Both were a DNF in the race however, Berger out
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps leads to Blanchimont. Here, the new short Grand Prix track of 1979 joins the old layout. Eighteen Formula One World Championship Grands Prix were run on the Spa-Francorchamps circuit's original configuration, which was boycotted by F1 in 1969, before the revised circuit banished it to the history books in 1979. The lap record of the old triangle-shaped track is 3 minutes and 13.4 seconds, held by the French driver Henri Pescarolo, driving a Matra at the 1973 Spa 1000 km World Sportscar Championship race at an average speed of , but the fastest ever recorded time of the old Spa