Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit

Albert Park Circuit was a hotbed for motorsport long before its debut on the Formula 1 calendar in 1996. The Melbourne street track hosted its inaugural Australian Grand Prix in 1953, but at the time it was a non-championship race using Formula Libre cars with the track laid out in the parkland around Lake Albert.

It was also not a global event just yet, with the 1953 Australian GP only featuring Aussie drivers, including a young Jack Brabham, as Doug Whiteford comfortably won the race by six laps. The event returned to Albert Park in 1956 and was arguably Australia’s most important motor race in history due to the new influx of European talent.

Stirling Moss won the 1956 Australian GP with F1 podium sitters Jean Behra, Peter Whitehead and Reg Parnell also driving, while the race remained a non-championship event for Formula Libre cars.

Moss enjoyed much success at Albert Park in the 1950s, as he also won the 1956 Australian Tourist Trophy setting the lap record for sports cars on the original track layout. That was added to with victory in Albert Park’s round for the 1958 Australian Drivers’ Championship, which was the second time the venue was on that calendar following Lex Davison’s victory the year prior. 

So, Albert Park was at the forefront of Australian motorsport in the 1950s but that all came to an end in 1958 after political pressure from local anti-racing campaigners, who had concerns over crowd control, safety and how the races were causing damage to the park. 

Racing therefore ceased to exist at the suburban park in Melbourne. However, conversations to get the action back at Albert Park surfaced in 1993 when local businessman Ron Walker started working with the government to stage the Australian GP in Melbourne, thus trying to end Adelaide’s tenure, having hosted the event since its F1 debut in 1985. 

Albert Park was then announced as a venue for the 1996 F1 season in December ’93, but the decision came with backlash for various reasons: that the race turned a public park into a private playground once a year, money would be better spent elsewhere and F1 should visit a permanent track in Australia.

Nevertheless, Albert Park became the new host of the Australian GP and it underwent radical changes for the return which included flipping the flow of travel, while using public roads and a car park to create a 16-turn track featuring various medium to high-speed corners. 

Moving to Albert Park also caused F1 to stage the Australian GP earlier in the year. This is because Adelaide was always the season finale during its time on the F1 calendar, but since Albert Park was added the Australian GP has traditionally been the first race. 

Albert Park’s debut on the F1 calendar set the precedent of what was to come in 1996 as Damon Hill won by 38 seconds in a dominant Williams 1-2 ahead of claiming the title later in the season. 

That year also proved to be a whole new era for Albert Park, as it attracted other racing series with Australian Supercars visiting in 1996 while Porsche Supercup came in 1999. Meanwhile, F1 continued racing in Albert Park and the early 2000s witnessed dominance from Michael Schumacher who won four Australian GPs out of five.

One of its most classic races came in 2007, which was also Lewis Hamilton’s F1 debut. The young McLaren driver made a brilliant start to his career by finishing on the podium behind team-mate Fernando Alonso and race winner Kimi Raikkonen, who was also making his Ferrari debut following Schumacher’s retirement. 

It came a year before more series visited Albert Park with the venue making its debut on the

Australian GT Championship calendar, ahead of Australian Formula Ford and the Mini Challenge arriving in 2009. So, despite its 38-year absence Albert Park quickly became a go-to venue for Australian motorsport with various single-seater and closed cockpit championships racing there across the 2000s.

That continued into the next decade where Albert Park proved to be a happy hunting ground for Sebastian Vettel, who won three times between 2011 and 2018, with the latter also being the year Ferrari Challenge and Melbourne SuperSprint came to the venue before Valtteri Bottas claimed a shock victory in the 2019 Australian GP.

However, the 2020 Australian GP was then cancelled at the last minute due to COVID-19. F1 was already receiving huge criticism for visiting the country as the series and event organisers were intent on the race going ahead, despite the World Health Organization having already labelled coronavirus as a ‘pandemic’.

That announcement prompted various sport leagues to indefinitely suspend its respective season, while other countries introduced travel bans yet F1 and the Australian GP were initially slow to react.

A McLaren crew member then tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival in Melbourne and on the Thursday the British outfit withdrew from the 2020 Australian GP. The following morning, the event was cancelled just hours before Free Practice 1 was due to begin and so were F1’s support races like Porsche Carrera Cup and the Supercars Championship. 

Motor racing at Albert Park then remained pretty minimal for the forthcoming years, but everything went back to normal in 2022 when F1 and other championships returned to the circuit, while F2 and F3 also made their respective debuts at the venue.

Overall, 2022 was a very significant year for Albert Park because it also signed a mega contract renewal to stay on the F1 calendar until at least 2035. In the first year of that new deal, Max Verstappen won the 2023 Australian GP amid track changes where the Turns 9 and 10 chicane was removed in favour of a long, fast bend to aid overtaking.