Newley resurfaced Melbourne was ground zero when the sport came to a standstill in 2020.
- The Australian Grand Prix was the first round of many Formula 1 races to be canceled in 2020.
- Following the success of the vaccine combined with Australia’s reopening, Formula 1 is returning to Melbourne.
- The entire track has undergone a resurfacing for the first time since its 1996 debut with the final layer put down in mid-January.
Every major sport had a moment of reckoning in March 2020 when it realized it could go no further as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened.
For Formula 1 it came mere hours before the start of its new season, after everyone had flown across the world to Melbourne’s park-based facility, where the usual first-event buzz evaporated in mere hours on a gloomy Friday morning.
Instead of Friday practice there was a swift dismantling of the paddock while fans arriving at the gates were told to turn around.
The Australian Grand Prix was the first round of many to fall in 2020, and 2021’s event was postponed and eventually canceled due to the country’s borders remaining shut.
Covid remains present but is now accepted as a part of life and, following the success of the vaccine combined with Australia’s reopening, Formula 1 is returning to Melbourne.
“It’s amazing that, on reflection, it was the unknown,” Australian Grand Prix Corporation CEO Andrew Westacott tells Autoweek on the 2020 cancellation.
F1 last pulled off a complete race weekend in Melbourne in 2019.
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“This pandemic was so new to everyone; we’ve all become accustomed to living and working with it some 760 days after that day on Friday the 13th, but the aftermath… I’m married, I haven’t been jilted at the altar, but I imagine that’s how it felt! The whole venue was looking superb but we had the rug pulled out from underneath us and through no fault of anyone’s there was this feeling of complete emptiness.”
Melbourne’s return will be celebrated widely. Build-up work has been ongoing for several months—as it the norm with a temporary facility—while matters stepped up a notch when equipment, and early set-up personnel such as broadcast riggers, began arriving after the last race in Saudi Arabia.
“We’ve tried hard for a couple of years to stage events but to no avail,” says Westacott. “But we’re here now, there’s a real resolve, there’s nothing stopping us, there won’t be false starts or left-field changes, it’s going to go ahead.
“It’s probably going to be closure for a lot of people and it’s exciting for all of our suppliers.”
Formula 1’s sole Australian racer, McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, is understandably buoyant.
The Formula 1 course at Albert Park went through modifications last year.
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“Obviously it’s personal to me, because I’m Aussie, and it’s a home one and that’s a privilege,” said Ricciardo. “But every driver I speak to about Melbourne, they love it. They love it as an event. So I’m just a big bundle of excitement.”
The location has stayed the same—Melbourne’s Albert Park—but the circuit layout has undergone a partial reprofiling since the most recent Formula 1 track activity in March 2019.
Turns 1, 3, 6 and the old Turns 13 and 15 have been widened, with some receiving a camber adjustment, while the old Turn 9/10 chicane has been removed entirely, creating a faster stretch of track adjacent to Albert Park’s Lake. Pit lane has also been widened in order to facilitate a rise in the pit lane speed limit from 60 km/h (37 mph) to 80 km/h (50 mph), with the hope that opens more strategic options.
The entire track has undergone a resurfacing for the first time since its 1996 debut with the final layer put down in mid-January; that means commuter and race build-up traffic has helped bed in the more abrasive surface. The entire work has come at a cost of around $15 million.
“We had to resurface and in dialogue with Formula 1 said let’s evolve the track and make it better because the racing in Melbourne was a bit processional and there’d been no track evolution since 1996,” Westacott said.
“We worked long and hard to come up with a more abrasive track surface, so with a combination of this, and simulator work, the intention is to produce more exciting racing and a better track for the future.”
Several current drivers, including Ricciardo, were consulted on the prospective changes, as was Australian ex-F1 racer Mark Webber, as well as 1996 champion Damon Hill and two-time Melbourne winner David Coulthard.
“One of the themes that came out is you want to reward aggressive driving and you want to penalize poor driving,” Westacott explains. “You take those comments and one area that really came out from the drivers was ‘don’t mess with Turn 11/12 at the end of the lake, make sure that stays the same’. All the other changes mean we’re probably going to get a fourth DRS zone at the end of the lake, and we protected what was a really important set of corners, and we made changes where we could.”
Melbourne’s round has typically been Formula 1’s season-opener since it acquired the Australian Grand Prix in 1996. Only twice before—in 2006 and 2010—has Melbourne been on the schedule and not been the curtain-raiser. This year it is round three, with its latest ever date of April 10, a situation that suited organizers. But from 2023 there is a clear hope to return to being the opener.
“Yeah our desire is to be race one,” Westacott outlines. “Ramadan (which organizers in the Middle East strive to avoid clashing with) and the complexities of a global calendar, always come into it. What we typically do—and we haven’t finalized dates for 2023 yet—is sit down with Formula 1 at our event here, and over the next two to three months work through with them very openly about the best thing for Melbourne and the best thing for the calendar.
F1 officials explain their 2020 decision to shut down the F1 Australian Grand Prix due to a positive COVID-19 case in the paddock.
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“We like being at the start of the season, it’s great, but this year it is suiting us as well because with the new spec cars people are getting some of the cobwebs out and allowing us to be ready for race three, so we don’t mind it… but we do like being up at the pointy end I can tell you.”
Formula 1’s return to Australia is likely to be a cathartic moment for many involved – and particularly those who had to stomach the fallout of the cancellation two years ago.
“The images of that day on my memory are one of Chase (Carey, then F1 CEO), Michael Masi (then F1 race director), myself and (Australian GP) chairman Paul Little having to face the world’s press for about 45 minutes, to address the cancellation, and the other image was the awful scenes where our staff member had a megaphone outside of the gates telling people that the event had been canceled.
“That was awful, and devastating for everyone, so one thing we’re doing is we’re going to be at the gates, to create new lasting memories of celebration and closure on COVID from an event’s point of view.
“We hope there’s going to be a lot of smiling faces. We’ll be out there with music and the welcome mat and it’ll be a completely different feeling when the gates open to welcome back Formula 1 on track.”
Keyword: How F1 Comes Full Circle with Return to Australia after Two Crazy Years