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For most of the last 30 years, Formula 1 seasons began in the Australian state of Victoria and the city of Melbourne. The Covid-19 pandemic changed that, and the opener moved to Bahrain. Now it is back in its longtime home.
“I’m very excited to have it as the opener again,” the McLaren driver Oscar Piastri, an Australian, said in a group interview last month. “Growing up as a kid, that’s how I remember Melbourne. I’m very excited to have it back as round one.”
This year, the 3.28-mile Albert Park circuit will hold its 28th Formula 1 race since it took over as the host for the Australian Grand Prix in 1996. Previously, the South Australia city of Adelaide had held the event.
“The race has always been a favorite for the fans, drivers and the teams,” Stefano Domenicali, the chief executive of Formula 1, said when the race’s new deal was announced in 2022. “And Melbourne is an incredible and vibrant international city that is a perfect match for our sport.
“We are very excited by the future in Australia as our sport continues to grow.”
The seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher holds the record for the most wins in this Grand Prix, with four, and his former team, Ferrari, has won it 11 times. McLaren shares this record. This year it will be fielding one of the two Australian drivers; Jack Doohan of Alpine is the other. Doohan, who will be starting just his second Formula 1 race, is the son of Mick Doohan, a five-time motorcycle MotoGP world champion.
Melbourne has held the Formula 1 season opener 22 times, but it lost the slot to Bahrain in 2006 when the race would have conflicted with the multisport Commonwealth Games, which were held in Melbourne that year. The city also lost the opening slot to Bahrain in 2010 in the sport’s attempt to align the race start time with early morning European television audiences. Melbourne moved to round two.
But since its 2020 race was canceled just two days before it was scheduled to start because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Melbourne lost the season’s curtain raiser. The Grand Prix was also not held in 2021 because of lockdown restrictions in Melbourne and did not return to the calendar until 2022. It has since been the third-round race until this year.
The Bahrain Grand Prix has been the opener instead. From 2022 to 2024, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix became round two to help with Formula 1’s travel logistics. But since the Muslim holy month of Ramadan runs until the end of March this year, those races in the Middle East have shifted back in the Formula 1 calendar.
Determining the season opener “depends on when they start the season and then when Ramadan is,” Travis Auld, chief executive of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, said in an interview last month.
“And so, in this particular instance it worked better for us to launch the season.”
The Melbourne track has a unique setting, with the circuit arranged on public roads that circle Albert Park’s boating lake.
“We’re a big festival in a park,” Auld said. “And so, it’s a street circuit, but it’s in an unbelievable setting of 400 acres of parklands.”
Formula 1 paddock personnel must cross pontoon bridges to access parking lots inside the circuit perimeter, while all the race’s more than 40,000 grandstand seats are in temporary structures.
The only permanent buildings, which house the corporation’s offices, are the paddock pit buildings where the Formula 1 teams work on their cars. There is a hospitality suite, known as the Paddock Club, on top of these buildings.
“To give you a sense, I reckon that was 29,000 grandstand seats in about 2019,” Auld said. “So, that shows the size of growth at the event.”
Auld said attendance was 452,000 for the whole 2024 Australian Grand Prix event, up from 324,000 in 2019, with the race bringing in an estimated $170 million in tourism money to Victoria each year.
Auld and the corporation hope to grow the event further, with the Melbourne race set to remain on the Formula 1 calendar until 2037.
Auld, who said any further increase in crowd size “needs to be done very carefully” so not to overwhelm the facilities, such as the bathrooms and concession stands, said he believed that there were several factors fueling the Grand Prix’s growth. That includes the race returning as the season opener.
“It starts with the fact that there’s this global surge in popularity for F1,” he said. “And Melbourne loves big events — we’ve got a couple of global events that do very well,” he said, including the Australian Open tennis tournament.
“We’ve got a lot of F1 story lines this year. There’s a genuine enthusiasm around where Oscar might put himself and give himself a chance to be on the podium,” he said of Piastri, the Australian racing for McLaren.
“We’ve got the Doohan name back in racing, and that’s big in Australia,” Auld said, referring to Jack Doohan, who drives for Alpine. “You’ve got Lewis Hamilton for the first time in Ferrari red. That’ll bring some interest, as we’ve got a big Italian community here. You’ve got the 75th year of F1.”
Melbourne’s new Formula 1 contract goes into effect in 2026. The contract stipulates that Melbourne will hold the season opener a minimum of five times.
“There’s some consideration in the agreement about having a certain number” of opening races, Auld said. “But they are subject to a lot of different things, and so I think we’ll end up with more than what we’ve been talking about.
“The bit that we can control is just to do a good job of launching the season when we get the opportunity, and that’s what we’re intending to do.”
