Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit joined the F1 calendar in 1996, replacing Adelaide as the host of the Australian Grand Prix. Here are all the facts and statistics you need to know about Albert Park!
Track length: 5.278km
Race length: 306.124km
Laps: 58
Turns: 14
Circuit opened: 1953
F1 first visited: 1996
Races held: 26
Track Record: 1:16.732, Max Verstappen, 2023
Lap Record: 1:20.235, Sergio Perez, 2023
ALBERT PARK RACE WINNERS
Since it first hosted the Australian Grand Prix in 1996, there have been 26 Formula 1 races held at Albert Park. From those 26 races, there have been 15 different Grand Prix winners.
Michael Schumacher is the driver with the most wins at the track.
Michael Schumacher has won more races than anyone else at Albert Park, taking four victories – in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004.
Ferrari are the team with the most Albert Park wins with nine, including victories in three of the last five races here.
While Ferrari are the team with the most wins, Mercedes-powered cars have had the most wins at the circuit, having won 11 times in total.
British and German drivers are currently tied for the most wins at this circuit, with nine apiece. Finland are the only other nation with multiple wins here – Valtteri Bottas took their total up to four in 2019.
Only three drivers have taken consecutive wins here.
Michael Schumacher holds the record for the most consecutive wins at Albert Park, having won three years in a row between 2000 and 2002. Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button are the only three drivers to have taken back-to-back wins at the track.
Four teams have taken successive Albert Park wins.
McLaren, Renault, Ferrari and Mercedes are the four teams to have taken consecutive wins at Albert Park. Ferrari hold the record for most successive wins at the circuit, having won four times in a row between 1999 and 2002.
There have been eight occasions on which a team has taken a 1-2 finish at Albert Park.
The most recent 1-2 finish here was for Mercedes, in 2019. Mercedes have the most 1-2 finishes of any team at the venue, with three. Ferrari are the only other team with multiple 1-2 results at Albert Park, while Williams, McLaren and Brawn GP are the other teams to achieve the feat.
There are five previous Australian Grand Prix winners on the 2024 grid.
Lewis Hamilton has won twice – in 2008 and 2015, while Fernando Alonso, Valtteri Bottas, Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen each have a single victory at the circuit. Alonso won in 2006, Bottas was victorious in 2019, Leclerc won in 2022 and Verstappen took victory in the last race here in 2023.
READ MORE: F1 Driver Form, Australian Grand Prix
The longest streak of different winners here is 7.
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. David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher, Giancarlo Fisichella, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were the seven victorious drivers in that period.
The largest win margin at this track is 26.777 seconds.
The biggest Albert Park win margin came at the dawn of the V6 hybrid era, when Nico Rosberg took victory in the 2014 Australian Grand Prix by 26.777 seconds.
The smallest victory margin at the track came at the 2023 Australian Grand Prix, when Max Verstappen finished only 0.179 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton in a race which ended under Safety Car conditions. The smallest win margin in a race at the track which did not end under Safety Car conditions 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 eight occasions. The average win margin at the circuit is 10.633 seconds.
ON THE PODIUM AT ALBERT PARK
From the 26 races at Albert Park, 28 different drivers have finished on the podium. No Australian drivers have finished on the podium at their home event during in its tenure in Melbourne – though Daniel Ricciardo did stand on the podium before being excluded from the final result in 2014.
Lewis Hamilton is the driver with the most podiums at Albert Park.
Lewis Hamilton has finished in the top three ten times at the Australian Grand Prix. That’s three times more than Sebastian Vettel, who is second on the list.
Ferrari are the team with the most podiums here.
Charles Leclerc’s victory in the 2022 Australian Grand Prix took Ferrari’s Albert Park podium tally to 20, the most for any team at the venue.
German and British drivers have recorded the most podiums.
In 2023, Lewis Hamilton’s second place finish at Albert Park saw British drivers equal German drivers as the nation with the most podium finishes at the track. Both nations have recorded 22 podium results in Melbourne.
On the 2024 grid, there are eight previous podium finishers at Albert Park.
Lewis Hamilton has the record of ten podiums here, while Fernando Alonso has had six top three finishes. Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen each have two podium appearances, while Kevin Magnussen, Charles Leclerc, Sergio Perez and George Russell each have a single Albert Park podium finish to their name.
The furthest back podium finisher at this track came from the pit lane.
Jarno Trulli finished third after starting from the pit lane at the 2009 Australian Grand Prix. Both Toyota cars were excluded from qualifying as they were found to have run illegal rear wings.
ALBERT PARK POLESITTERS
From the 26 Australian Grands Prix held at Albert Park, 11 different drivers have taken pole position here.
Lewis Hamilton has taken the most poles here.
Hamilton has eight pole positions to his name at Albert Park, including in all seven Australian Grand Prix weekends between 2014 and 2019.
British drivers have taken the most poles here, with ten starts from the front of the grid.
There’s yet to be a race at Albert Park in which the fastest qualifier has failed to start from pole position.
On the 2024 grid, there are three previous Australian Grand Prix polesitters.
With Lewis Hamilton having dominated on Saturdays at the Australian Grand Prix between 2014 and 2019, Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen are the only other current drivers to have secured pole here. Leclerc took his first pole at the track in 2022, while Verstappen did so in 2023.
Mercedes and Ferrari share the record for most in Melbourne
Mercedes and Ferrari are tied as the teams with the most poles at the track, each having set the Saturday pace on six occasions.
Williams locked out the front row at the first Australian Grand Prix held at Albert Park in 1996. For all of the next nine races at the track, a team locked out the front row. It was not until 2005 that drivers from two different teams started on the front row at the venue.
There were no repeat polesitters between 2004 and 2008.
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 at Albert Park.
Jacques Villeneuve was the first to take consecutive poles here in 1996 & 1997, Mika Hakkinen did so in 1998, 1999 & 2000, Michael Schumacher did so in 2003 & 2004 and Sebastian Vettel achieved the feat in 2010 & 2011. Lewis Hamilton holds the record for most poles in a row here, with six between 2014 and 2019.
Williams, McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes are the five teams to have taken consecutive poles at Albert Park.
Mercedes hold the record for most successive poles at the track. Thanks to Lewis Hamilton, they took pole every year between 2014 and 2019. Their streak ended in 2022.
The fastest ever lap of the Albert Park track came in qualifying for the 2023 race.
Max Verstappen holds the record for the fastest lap at the track, setting a 1:16.732 for pole position in 2023. It was the second time F1 used the revised layout of the Melbourne circuit.
The pole time decreased by almost 12 seconds between 1996 and 2019.
Despite relatively little changes to the venue between 1996 and 2019, the pole time at Albert Park decreased by almost 12 seconds. Jacques Villeneuve’s pole time in 1996 was 11.885 seconds slower than Lewis Hamilton’s pole time in 2019, in the last race to be held on the venue’s original layout.
The smallest difference between the fastest lap set in qualifying and the time for last on the grid is 2.181 seconds.
That happened 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 position at Albert Park has been decided by less than a tenth only three times.
Pole has not been decided by less than a tenth of a second at the Australian Grand Prix since 2004. The 2019 pole margin was the closest since then, with Lewis Hamilton taking pole by 0.112 seconds.
2002 holds the record for the smallest pole margin at the circuit, when Michael Schumacher secured pole by just 0.005 seconds.
The average pole margin at Albert Park is 0.463 seconds.
The average pole margin from the last ten Australian Grands Prix slightly lower, at 0.341 seconds.
SATURDAY TO SUNDAY
The Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park has been won from pole on 11 occasions.
In 2022, Charles Leclerc became the first polesitter at Albert Park to win since 2015. Front row starters have won 17 times in total, meaning nine races at the track have been won from third or further back on the grid.
There have been only 10 occasions on which the polesitter did not lead at the end of Lap 1. Five of those occasions have been in the last eight races at the track.
Jacques Villeneuve (in 1997) and Rubens Barrichello (in 2002) are the only Australian Grand Prix polesitters who’ve failed to reach the end of the first lap at Albert Park.
The furthest back win at Albert Park came from 11th on the grid.
David Coulthard took the final victory of his Formula 1 career at Albert Park with McLaren in 2003, winning from 11th on the grid. Eddie Irvine’s win from sixth on the grid in 1999 and Kimi Raikkonen’s victory from seventh in 2013 are the only other times that the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park has not been won from the front two rows of the grid.
READ MORE: F1 Grid Slot Statistics, Australian Grand Prix
The 1999 and 2010 Australian Grands Prix are the only events here in which none of the top three on the grid finished on the podium.
The polesitter at the Albert Park track has finished on the podium on 18 occasions, including in all but one of the last 11 Australian Grands Prix (2014, when Lewis Hamilton retired).
SUNDAY STATS
1,502 Grand Prix laps have been raced at Albert Park.
Of the 1,502 laps raced in Melbourne, Fernando Alonso has completed the most. He has toured the track 988 times so far in his career – 119 times more than anyone else.
The 2018 Australian Grand Prix saw 14 drivers finish the race on the same lap as the leader.
That’s the 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.
15 of the 26 races held at Albert Park have featured a Safety Car period.
There have been 33 Safety Car periods in total at Albert Park since 1996. The 2006 Australian Grand Prix saw the most full Safety Car periods during an event here, with it being called out four times. It’s one of nine races at the circuit to feature multiple Safety Car periods.
Just two races here have been affected by rain.
Both the 2003 and 2010 Australian Grands Prix were run on a drying track.
Only two drivers have recorded a Grand Slam at Albert Park.
Michael Schumacher recorded the first Grand Slam here in 2004, while Charles Leclerc achieved the feat of taking pole, leading every lap, winning the race and setting the fastest lap in 2022.
Four drivers have led every lap of a race at Albert Park.
There have been four occasions on which a single driver has led every lap at Albert Park: Michael Schumacher in 2004, Jenson Button in 2009, Nico Rosberg in 2014 and Charles Leclerc in 2022.
There have been only three races at the track in which the winning driver did not lead the most laps. It happened in 1996, 2003 and 2016.
Damon Hill holds the record for fewest laps led en route to Australian Grand Prix victory in Melbourne. He led only eight laps in the 1996 Australian Grand Prix.
Jacques Villeneuve is the driver to have led the most laps at Albert Park without ever winning.
The Canadian led 50 laps on debut at the 1996 Australian Grand Prix. In total, nine drivers have led here without winning. George Russell is the only driver on the current grid to have done so.
Seven drivers led a lap of the 2013 Australian Grand Prix.
Only one race at Albert Park has featured more than four drivers leading a lap. That was the 2013 Australian Grand Prix, in which seven drivers led at least one lap during the race.
The longest Grand Prix at this circuit lasted for two hours and 32 minutes.
The 2023 Australian Grand Prix – with its multiple Safety Car and Red Flag periods set a new record as the longest race ever held at Albert Park. Max Verstappen won in a time of two hours, 32 minutes and 38.371 seconds.
The shortest race here came at the 2017 Australian Grand Prix, when Sebastian Vettel won in a time of 1:24:11.672.
17 different drivers have set the fastest lap of the race in Albert Park’s history.
Kimi Raikkonen is the driver who has set the most Fastest Laps at the Albert Park track, having done so six times – double the number of times of anyone else.
The overall finish rate at Albert Park is 62%.
From 560 total entries into races at Albert Park, 550 cars have qualified and 542 cars have started races. From those 542 cars, 335 have reached the chequered flag. That means, in total, 62% of cars which have started a race here have reached the end of it.
The highest number of cars to reach the end of a Grand Prix at this track is 18.
18 cars crossed the finish line in 2013, making it the races with the most finishers at Albert Park. However, the highest percentage of race finishers is 85%, which happened in 2005, 2019 and 2022, when 17 of the 20 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.
Three Albert Park races have been red-flagged.
Both the 1996 and 2016 Albert Park races were red flagged due to crashes at Turn 3. Martin Brundle’s Jordan car was wrecked after being flipped over in 1996, while Fernando Alonso’s McLaren suffered a similar fate in 2016.
The 2023 Australian Grand Prix is the only race at Albert Park to have featured multiple red flag periods. The red flags were shown three times in that race, due to crashes for Alex Albon and Kevin Magnussen, plus a multi-car crash at the final standing restart.
There have been five races at Albert Park which did not run to their scheduled distance.
The 2005, 2006, 2014, 2016 and 2017 Australian Grands Prix all failed to reach full distance. All of those races had laps removed due to cars stalling on the formation lap. Read more: F1 Races Which Didn’t Reach Full Distance.
CHAMPIONSHIP GLORY
No championships have been decided at Albert Park.
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 14 occasions, while the polesitter has gone on to win the title in the same year on 18 occasions, including in all but three of the last 15 races at the circuit.
From the last 15 seasons in which the Australian Grand Prix has been held, the team leading the Constructors’ Championship after the event has gone on to win the title that year only six times.
After setting the fastest lap on his way to victory in the 2019 Australian Grand Prix, Valtteri Bottas set a new record for the largest lead held after the first round of the championship.
