For most of the last 30 years, the Formula 1 seasons have begun in the Australian state of Victoria and the city of Melbourne. The Covid-19 pandemic changed this and the opener moved to Bahrain. Now he is back in his long -term home.
“I am very excited to have it again as a opener,” said McLaren Oscar Piasstri, Australian, in a team interview last month. “Growing up as a child, so I remember Melbourne. I am very excited to have it back as a round. ”
This year, the Albert Park circuit of 3.28 miles will hold the 28th Formula 1 match since he took over as a host for the Australian Grand Prix in 1996.
“The race has always been one of my favorite for fans, drivers and teams,” said Stefano Domenicali, Managing Director of Formula 1, when the new match agreement was announced in 2022.
“We are very excited about the future in Australia as our sport continues to grow.”
The seven -time world champion Michael Schumacher holds the record for most wins in this Grand Prix, with four, and his former team, Ferrari, has won it 11 times. McLaren shares this record. This year he will succeed one of the two Australian drivers. Alpine’s Jack Doohan is the other. Doohan, who will start only Formula 1’s second match, is the son of Mick Doohan, a world champion MotoGP five times.
Melbourne has kept the Formula 1 session opened 22 times, but lost its reception to Bahrain in 2006, when the race had clashed with the Multisport Commonwealth Games, which took place in Melbourne that year. The city also lost its starting place in Bahrain in 2010 in the sport’s attempt to align the start of the race with European television audiences early in the morning. Melbourne moved to the second round.
But since his race in 2020 was canceled just two days before scheduled to start due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Melbourne lost the Raiser of the season curtain. The Grand Prix was also not made in 2021 due to locking restrictions in Melbourne and did not return to the calendar until 2022. Since then it has been the third round until this year.
Bahrain’s Grand Prix was the opener. From 2022 to 2024, the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia became the second round to help with Formula 1’s travel supply. But since the Muslim sacred month of Ramadan runs by the end of March this year, the Middle East Games have shifted to the Middle East.
The designation of the season operating “depends on when they start the season and then when it is Ramadan,” Travis Auld, chief executive of Australian Grand Prix Corporation, said in an interview.
“And so, in this particular case, it worked better to start the season.”
The part of Melbourne has a unique environment, with the circuit arranged on public roads that limit Albert Park Lake Boating.
“We’re a big festival in a park,” Auld said. “And so it’s a street circuit, but it’s in an incredible 400 acre of Parklands.”
Formula 1 Paddock staff must cross the Pontoon bridges to gain access to parking spaces within the perimeter of the circuit, while all 40,000 seats in the race are in temporary structures.
The only permanent buildings, which host the company’s offices, are Paddock Pit buildings, where Formula 1 teams work in their cars. There is a hosting suite known as The Paddock Club, above these buildings.
“To give you a feeling, I think there were 29,000 Grandstand seats in 2019,” Auld said. “So this shows the magnitude of growth at the event.”
Auld said the participation was 452,000 for the entire Australian Grand Prix in 2024, from 324,000 in 2019, with the race bringing about $ 170 million to tourist money in Victoria each year.
Auld and the company hope to further develop the event, with the Melbourne race remaining in the Formula 1 calendar by 2037.
Auld, who said that any further increase in the magnitude of the crowd “must be done very carefully” so as not to flood the facilities, such as bathrooms and concession kiosks, said he believed that there were several factors that feed the growth of the Grand Prix. This includes the race that returns as a opening season of the season.
“It starts with the fact that there is this global increase in popularity for F1,” he said. “And Melbourne loves big events – we have some worldwide events that do very well,” he said, including the Tennis Australian Open tournament.
“We have a lot of F1 history lines this year. There is a genuine excitement around the point where Oscar can put on itself and give it the opportunity to be on the podium,” said Piasstri, Australian matches for McLaren.
“We have the name Doohan back to Racing, and this is great in Australia,” said Auld, referring to Jack Doohan, who leads for Alpine. “You have Lewis Hamilton for the first time at Ferrari Red. This will bring some interest as we have a large Italian community here. You have the 75th year of F1.”
The new Melbourne Convention of Formula 1 comes into force in 2026. The contract stipulates that Melbourne will keep the opening of the season at least five times.
“There is some thought in the agreement to own a particular number” of the opening matches, Auld said. “But they are subject to many different things, and so I think we will end up in more of what we talked to.
“The part we can control is just doing a good job to start the season when we have the opportunity and that is what we intend to do.”
