Australian Grand Prix
The Australian Grand Prix is an annual Formula One motor racing event, taking place in Melbourne, Victoria. The event is contracted to be held at least until 2035. One of the oldest surviving motorsport competitions held in Australia, the Grand Prix has moved frequently with 23 different venues having been used since it was first run at Phillip Island in 1928. The race became part of the Formula One World Championship in 1985. Since 1996, it has been held at the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne, with the exceptions of 2020 and 2021, when the races were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, it was held in Adelaide.
Historically, the Australian Grand Prix was held as either the last race of the season, when held at Adelaide, or as the opening round or early on at Melbourne. In, it returned to the calendar as the third race of the season, following the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix. In, the Grand Prix was moved back to the opening race slot of the season.
History
Pre-war
While an event called the Australian Grand Prix was staged in 1927 at the grass surface Goulburn Racecourse held as a series of sprints, it is generally accepted that the Australian Grand Prix began as the 100 Miles Road Race held at the Phillip Island road circuit in 1928. The inaugural race was won by Arthur Waite in what was effectively an entry supported by the Austin Motor Company, a modified Austin 7. For eight years, races, first called the Australian Grand Prix in 1929, continued on the rectangular dirt road circuit. Bugattis dominated the results, taking four consecutive wins from 1929 to 1932. The last Phillip Island race was in 1935 and the title lapsed for three years. An AGP style event was held on Boxing Day, 1936 at the South Australian town of Victor Harbor for a centennial South Australian Grand Prix before the Australian Grand Prix title was revived in 1938 for the grand opening of what would become one of the world's most famous race tracks, Mount Panorama just outside the semi-rural town of Bathurst. Only just completed, with a tar seal for the circuit still a year away, the race was won by Englishman Peter Whitehead racing a new voiturette ERA B-Type that was just too fast for the locally developed machinery. One more race was held, at the Lobethal Circuit near the South Australian town of Lobethal in 1939, before the country was plunged into World War II.Post-war
Early post-war races
In the immediate post-war era, racing was sparse with competitors using pre-war cars with supplies cobbled together around the rationing of fuel and tyres. Mount Panorama held the first post-war Grand Prix in 1947, beginning a rotational system between the Australian States, as fostered by the Australian Automobile Association. A mixture of stripped-down production sports cars and Australian "specials" were to take victories as the race travelled amongst temporary converted airfield circuits and street circuits like Point Cook, Leyburn, Nuriootpa and Narrogin before, on the race's return to Mount Panorama in 1952, the way to the future was pointed by Doug Whiteford racing a newly imported Talbot-Lago Formula One car to victory. Grand Prix machinery had already been filtering through in the shape of older Maserati and OSCAs and smaller Coopers but had yet to prove to be superior to the locally developed cars. The end of the Australian "specials" was coming, but the magnificent Maybach-based series of specials driven exuberantly by Stan Jones would give many hope for the next few years.Lex Davison, who for several years would experiment with sports car engines in smaller Formula 2 chassis, took his first of four victories in a Jaguar engined Formula 2 HWM in 1954, while the previous year Whiteford won his third and final Grand Prix as for the first time racing cars thundered around the streets surrounding the Albert Park Lake in inner Melbourne. That circuit, which for four brief years gave Australia the strongest taste of the grandeur surrounding European Grand Prix racing, was 40 years later very much modified, used to host the 1996 Australian Grand Prix as the modern Formula One world championship venue. Jack Brabham took his first of three AGP wins in 1955 at the short Port Wakefield Circuit in South Australia. The race is significant in that Brabham was driving a Bristol powered Cooper T40, the first ever rear-engine car to win the Grand Prix.
The Grand Prix returned to Albert Park in 1956, the year when Melbourne hosted the Summer Olympics, to play host to a group of visiting European teams, led by Stirling Moss and the factory Maserati racing team who brought a fleet of 250F Grand Prix cars and 300S sports racing cars. Moss won the Grand Prix from Maserati teammate Jean Behra. That 1956 race would inspire the next great era of the Grand Prix.
Tasman Formula
The growing influence of engineer-drivers Jack Brabham and a couple of years behind him New Zealander Bruce McLaren would transform the race. Brabham, who first won the Grand Prix in 1955 in a Cooper T40 Bristol he had brought home from his first foray into English racing, would test new developments for Cooper during the European winter, beginning a flood of Cooper-Climax Grand Prix machinery into Australia and New Zealand before Brabham started building his own cars, as well as the appearance of Lotus chassis as well, finally killing off the Australian "specials". With European Formula One restricted by the 1.5-litre regulations and big powerful 2.5-litre Australian cars were tremendously attractive to the European teams and when BRM Grand Prix team toured Australia during the summer of 1962, the seed grew that became the Tasman Series.The top European Formula One teams and drivers raced the European winters in Australia and New Zealand from 1963 to 1969 playing host to a golden age for racing in the region for which the Australian Grand Prix became jewels of the summer. The popularity of the Tasman formulae was directly responsible for 1966's "return to power" in Formula One, and having spent years developing with Repco the Brabham cars and eventually the Oldsmobile-based Repco-Brabham V8s in the Tasman series gave Jack Brabham the opportunity to unexpectedly dominate Formula One in his Brabhams with a ready-proven lightweight car that left Ferrari and the British "garagistes" struggling with their heavy, technically fragile or underpowered cars until the appearance of the Ford Cosworth DFV in 1967.
The Formula One stars of the era all visited the Tasman Series, including World Champions Jim Clark, John Surtees, Phil Hill, Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt, while other F1 regulars Timmy Mayer, Pedro Rodriguez, Piers Courage, leading teams from Cooper, Lotus, Lola, BRM, even the four wheel drive Ferguson P99 and finally, Ferrari, racing against the local stars, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme, Chris Amon, Frank Gardner, Frank Matich, Leo Geoghegan and Kevin Bartlett. Brabham won the Grand Prix three times, McLaren twice, Clark twice, the second was his last major victory before his untimely death, winning a highly entertaining battle with Chris Amon at the 1968 Australian Grand Prix at Sandown Raceway. Graham Hill won the 1966 race, with Amon winning the final Tasman formulae race in 1969 leading home Ferrari teammate Derek Bell for a dominant 1–2 at Lakeside Raceway.
Formula 5000
By the end of the decade, European teams were increasingly reluctant to commit to the Tasman Series in the face of longer home seasons, but also having to develop 2.5-litre versions of their 3.0 litre F1 engines. Local Tasman cars were declining as well and after originally opting a 2.0 litre version of Tasman to be the future of the Australian Grand Prix, the overwhelming support for the already well established Formula 5000 saw natural selection force Confederation of Australian Motorsport ' hand.For the first half of the 1970s, the Tasman Series continued as a local series primarily for Formula 5000 racers, but by 1976, the Australian and New Zealand legs fractured apart and the Australian Grand Prix separated from the remnants and became a stand-alone race once more. During this era, the former Tasman stars, Matich, Geoghegan and Bartlett would continue on as a new generation of drivers emerged, some like Garrie Cooper and Graham McRae developing their own cars while others like Max Stewart, John McCormack and Alfredo Costanzo using European-built cars, mostly Lolas. Matich won two Grands Prix is his own cars before Stewart and McRae each took a pair of wins. Towards the end of the 1970s, the race again became a home to returning European-based antipodeans like Alan Jones and Larry Perkins with Warwick Brown winning the 1977 race, while in 1976, touring car racer John Goss completed a remarkable double becoming the only driver to win the Grand Prix and the Bathurst 1000 touring car race.
Calder Park
Declining economy and the dominance of the local scene by Group C touring cars towards the latter part of the 1970s saw Formula 5000 gradually fall out of favour. By 1980, the decision to replace was once again imminent; however, the form of Alan Jones in Formula One saw entrepreneur Bob Jane seize an opportunity to bring Formula One back as the Grand Prix Formula. The 1980 event held at Jane's Calder Park Raceway saw a combined field of Formula One and Formula 5000 padded out with the Australised version of Formula Atlantic cars, Formula Pacific. The newly crowned world champion, Jones swept the field aside in his Williams-Ford, but with only two F1 cars entering.The continuing disintegration of F5000 saw Jane concentrate the next four Grands Prix on the Formula Pacific category and importing Formula One drivers to race the locals in fields almost entirely made up of Ralt RT4s. Brazilian Roberto Moreno dominated this era, winning three of the four races, ceding only the 1982 race to future four-time World Champion Alain Prost.
Jane's attempt to bring the World Championship to Calder Park ultimately failed, as did a bid by Melbourne's other circuit Sandown. As it turned out, F1 would be tempted away from Melbourne by a far more attractive option but it was listed as a reserve race in the 1982 F1 calendar.