Here are all the facts and stats you need to know about the Albert Park circuit!
?? RACE WINNERS
There have been 23 previous F1 races held at the Albert Park circuit. From those 23 races, there have been twelve different Grand Prix winners.
Michael Schumacher is the driver with the most wins at the track, having taken victory here on four occasions. Ferrari are the team with the most Albert Park wins with eight, including victories in both of the last two races here. Mercedes-powered cars have had the most wins at the track though, having won ten times in total. British and German drivers are currently tied for the most wins at this circuit, with nine apiece.
Michael Schumacher holds the record for the most consecutive wins at Albert Park, having won three years in a row between 2000 and 2002. Sebastian Vettel will equal that tally should he win Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix. Schumacher, Vettel and Jenson Button are the only three drivers to have taken back-to-back wins at the track.
There are three previous Australian Grand Prix winners on the 2019 grid. Sebastian Vettel has won here three times, and could equal Michael Schumacher’s record of four wins at the track this weekend, while Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton have each won here twice.
The longest streak of different winners at the Albert Park track came between 2003 and 2009, when there were no repeat Australian Grand Prix winners for seven years.
The largest win margin at this track came at the dawn of the hybrid era, when Nico Rosberg took victory by 26.777 seconds. Meanwhile, the smallest victory margin at the track came in the controversial 1998 Australian Grand Prix when Mika Hakkinen won ahead of team-mate David Coulthard by just 0.702 seconds.
The race has been won at Albert Park by less than five seconds on seven occasions. From the last ten Australian Grands Prix, the average win margin at the track has been 10.094 seconds.
?? ON THE PODIUM
From the 23 races at Albert Park, 24 different drivers have finished on the podium.
Lewis Hamilton is the driver with the most podiums at the track, having finished in the top three eight times. Ferrari are the team with the most podiums here with nineteen rostrum appearances. German drivers have finished on the podium more than drivers from any other nation at this track, with 22 top three finishes.
From the current grid, there are six previous podium finishers at Albert Park. Lewis Hamilton has the record of eight podiums here, a tally which Sebastian Vettel could equal on Sunday. Meanwhile, Kimi Raikkonen has taken six podium finishes at the Australian Grand Prix, and Robert Kubica, Kevin Magnussen and Valtteri Bottas have finished in the top three once each here.
The polesitter at the Albert Park track has finished on the podium on fifteen occasions.
The furthest back podium finisher at this track actually came from the pit-lane. Jarno Trulli finished third after starting from the pit-lane in 2009 after the Toyota cars were excluded from Qualifying for running illegal rear wings.
The 1999 and 2010 races are the only events here where none of the top three on the grid finished on the podium.
?? POLESITTERS
Nine different drivers have taken pole at the Albert Park circuit. Lewis Hamilton has taken the most poles here, setting the fastest lap in qualifying on seven occasions – including at every Australian Grand Prix weekend since 2014. Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes are all tied for the most poles at the track with five apiece. British drivers have taken the most poles here, with nine starts from the front of the grid.
From the 2019 grid, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen are the only previous Australian Grand Prix polesitters. Vettel has had three poles here compared to Hamilton’s seven, while Raikkonen took his only Australian pole on his Ferrari début in 2007. Since 2010, Vettel and Hamilton are the only drivers to have taken pole at the Albert Park circuit.
The longest streak of different polesitters at this track came between 2004 and 2008, when there were no repeat polesitters for five seasons.
Five drivers have taken back-to-back poles here: Jacques Villeneuve in 1996 and 1997; Mika Hakkinen in 1998, 1999 and 2000; Michael Schumacher in 2003 and 2004; Sebastian Vettel in 2010 and 2011; and Lewis Hamilton in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
The fastest ever lap of the Albert Park track came in Qualifying for the 2018 race, in which Lewis Hamilton took pole with a lap time of 1:21.164.
There is a difference of 11.20 seconds between the slowest and fastest pole times here, set in the first and latest Australian Grands Prix held at the Albert Park track. That’s not including the lap set by Hamilton to take pole in the rain-affected 2014 qualifying session.
The smallest difference between the fastest lap set in qualifying and the time for last on the grid is 2.181 seconds. This was in 2009, when Rubens Barrichello’s fastest Q2 time was just 2.181 seconds faster than the lap which secured Sebastien Bourdais’ last place on the grid.
Pole has been decided by less than a tenth three times here, most recently in 2004.
The average pole margin at Albert Park from the last ten events is 0.397 seconds.
?? SATURDAY TO SUNDAY
The Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park has been won from pole on nine occasions, and has been won from the front row of the grid fourteen times. That means nine Grands Prix here have been won from third or further back on the grid.
The furthest back win at Albert Park came in 2003, when David Coulthard won for McLaren from eleventh on the grid.
?? SUNDAY STATS
Last year’s Australian Grand Prix had fourteen drivers finishing the race on the same lap as the leader – a new record for the most number of drivers finishing on the same lap as the winner at this track. Conversely, the 1998 Australian Grand Prix saw just two drivers complete all of the laps. On average, eight drivers finish on the lead lap at Albert Park.
Thirteen of the 23 races held here have featured a Safety Car period. The 2006 Australian Grand Prix saw the most Safety Car periods during an event here, with it being called out four times.
Just two races here have been affected by rain. Both the 2003 and 2010 Australian Grands Prix were run on a drying track.
The longest Grand Prix at this circuit happened in 2016, and was won in a time of 1:48:15.565 following a Red Flag period as a result of Fernando Alonso’s huge accident. The shortest race here came in the following year, when Sebastian Vettel won in a time of 1:24:11.672.
Kimi Raikkonen is the driver who has set the most Fastest Laps at the Albert Park track, having done so six times.
From 490 total entries into races at Albert Park, 293 cars have reached the end of the race. That means, on average, 59.2% of drivers who start the race reach the end of it. The most number of cars to reach the end of a Grand Prix at this track is eighteen in 2013, though the highest percentage of race finishers was in 2005, when seventeen of the twenty entrants finished the race. The least number of cars to reach the end of the race came in 2008, when just six drivers reached the end of the Grand Prix.
Two races at the Albert Park track have featured a Red Flag period – 1996 and 2016.
So far, 1,328 Grand Prix laps have been raced at Albert Park.
? CHAMPIONSHIP GLORY
Given its place at the start of the calendar each season, it’s unsurprising that no champions have been crowned here. The winner of this race has gone on to win the title in the same season on thirteen occasions.
