The Australian Grand Prix is a Formula One race that is part of the annual Formula One championship season. It is held at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit at Albert Park in Melbourne. The event was held annually since 1928 at various venues in Australia, before it became part of the Formula One championship in 1985. The race was held at the Adelaide Street Circuit in Adelaide from 1985 to 1995, before moving to Melbourne in 1996.

The Australian Grand Prix is the first round of the Championship, having been the first race of each year, excluding 2006, since the event moved to Melbourne. During its years in Adelaide, the Australian Grand Prix was the final round of the Championship, replacing the Portuguese Grand Prix in that respect. As the final round of the season, the Grand Prix hosted a handful of memorable Grand Prix, most notably the 1986 and 1994 event which saw those respective titles decided.

In terms of Grand Prix victories, Michael Schumacher and Ferrari are the most successful driver and team respectively. David Coulthard, Rubens Barrichello and Giancarlo Fisichella are the only drivers to have started every single Melbourne race.

In November 2006 ING became the naming rights sponsor of the Australian Grand Prix in a three-year deal.

History of the Australian Grand Prix

Australian Grands Prix, which were not part of the World Championship but did feature F1-style open-wheeler racing vehicles, were held at various circuits around Australia for many decades, dating back into the 1920s, making the race one of the oldest surviving races today. Like the French Grand Prix the race wandered from circuit to circuit for much of its life, and was for a time rotated amongst the states of Australia. The race was held at Australia's most famous racetrack, Mount Panorama Circuit four times between 1938 and 1958. Another notable venue in the 1950s was a road circuit at Albert Park in Melbourne, on two occasions. In this era Lex Davison won the race four times, a record that would last until 2004 when it was equalled by Michael Schumacher. In the 1960s the race was an integral part of the Tasman Series which attracted the leading Formula 1 teams of the day and also influenced the careers of a generation of Australian and New Zealand drivers on their way to Europe with Jack Brabham, Denny Hulme and Bruce McLaren prominent figures of the era. During the 1970s the race lost its international lustre as a Formula 5000 race. The early 1980s regained some of lost glory when leading Formula 1 drivers were hired to race in Formula Atlantic cars at Calder Park Raceway. The Atlantic era was dominated by Roberto Moreno, winning three times against star-studded fields. The last domestic Grand Prix was held in 1984.

Formula 1 in Australia

Australia became part of the F1 world championship in 1985 with the last race of the season held on the street circuit in Adelaide. The circuit, whilst not as tight as Monaco, was notoriously tough on drivers and gearboxes. The Adelaide Street Circuit, which held its last Formula One race in 1995, has often been stated as being one of, if not, the greatest street circuits in the world. Whenever the teams came to Adelaide they enjoyed the party atmosphere.

In 1993 prominent Melbourne businessman Mr Ron Walker AC CBE, current Chairman of the Australian Grand Prix began working with the then Kennett government to make Melbourne the host of the event. After the government of Jeff Kennett spent an undisclosed (but speculated to be quite large) amount, it was announced in late 1993 (days after a South Australian election) that the race would be shifted to a rebuilt Albert Park street circuit in Melbourne. The race moved to Melbourne in 1996. The decision to hold the race there was controversial. A series of protests were organised by the "Save Albert Park" group, who claimed that the race turned a public park into a private playground for one week per year. Additionally, they claimed that the race cost a great deal of money that would be better spent, if it were to be spent on motor racing, on a permanent circuit elsewhere. Finally, they said that the claimed economic benefits of the race were false or exaggerated. The race organisers and the government claimed that the economic benefits to the state outweighed the costs, and highlighted that the park's public amenities have been greatly improved from the World War II vintage facilities previously located at Albert Park; the Melbourne Sports and Aquatc Centre (scene of many Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games events) being the centre piece and best known of the revitalised facilities.

The idea of a permanent racing circuit has never really been addressed, but there is much speculation that the real reason for a street circuit is to provide a distinctive backdrop for television - a permanent race circuit would be unidentifiable and, from the perspective of the Formula One organisers, may as well be held in Europe at much lesser cost and inconvenience to them. In any case, a substantial number of people do embrace (and attend) the race at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit.

The Melbourne Era

Bernie Ecclestone, the president of Formula One Management, the group that runs modern-day Formula One in conjunction with the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), once famously said that it took 10 minutes to do the deal with Melbourne that would see the Victorian capital host the Australian Grand Prix from 1996. It is thought that Melbourne’s unsuccessful quest to stage the 1996 Olympic Games, and the subsequently successful bid by northern rival city Sydney to host the 2000 Olympics, was a driving force behind Melbourne’s motivation to wrest the Australian Grand Prix away from Adelaide.

Albert Park, within easy reach of the Melbourne central business district, became home to the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. A 16-turn circuit, which measures 5.3 kilometres in its current guise, was built utilising a combination of public roads within the park. The circuit is renowned as being a smooth and high-speed test for Formula One teams and drivers, and its characteristics are similar to the only other street circuit set in a public park currently used for a race in the Formula One World Championship, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Canada.

The promotional theme for the first race in Melbourne was “Melbourne – What a Great Place for the Race”. Some 401,000 people turned out for the first race in 1996, which remains a record for the event. The logistics of creating a temporary circuit and hosting an event of the magnitude of a Formula One Grand Prix from scratch weren’t lost on the international visitors, with Melbourne winning the F1 Constructors’ Association Award for the best organised Grand Prix of the year in its first two years of 1996 and 1997.

The move of the Australian Grand Prix to Melbourne saw a change in the time of year that the F1 teams and personnel made their annual voyage Down Under. Adelaide, for each of its 11 years, was the final race of the F1 season, usually in October or November, while Melbourne has been the first race of the season in every year since 1996 with the exception of 2006, when it was the third race of the year to allow for the Commonwealth Games to take place in the city. As such, the Albert Park circuit has seen the Formula One debuts of every prominent driver in the last decade. 1997 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve made his race debut in Melbourne’s first year of 1996, and became one of three men to secure pole position in his maiden Grand Prix. Other prominent names to debut in Melbourne are two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso, Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Räikkönen in 2001, and Australia’s current F1 driver, Mark Webber, in 2002.

As part of celebrations for the 10th running of the event at Albert Park in 2005, Webber drove his Williams F1 car over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a promotional event, and the Melbourne city streets hosted a parade of F1 machinery and V8 Supercars, Australia’s highest-profile domestic motor sport category.

Beyond 2010, the Victorian Government announced that Melbourne would retain the Australian Grand Prix until at least 2015. The race starting time will be moved to 5pm in order to satisfy Bernie Ecclestone's ultimatum earlier this year, stating to the Sunday Mail that the only way Melbourne would retain the race is a move to a night race in order to increase European television audiences. However the later start will not result in a 'night race' as Geoscience Australia has forecast dusk for 29th of March 2009 at 7:45pm