The best way F1 can pay back Melbourne two years on from 2020's aborted start

It’s been two long years. We’ve all been through so much with the COVID-19 pandemic, it hardly seems helpful to mention it again. But we know just how tough it was, still is for some, and how much people yearned for escapism. That has always been a part of motorsport’s DNA, with Formula 1, as its top echelon, the most visible and valuable global series.

And all of that is worth considering when looking back to March 2020 and the last time an Australian Grand Prix was about to be staged. Then, the pandemic was just unfurling, with a hoped-for expectation it wouldn’t be as bad as it tragically became.

Melbourne’s Albert Park track was gearing up to celebrate its 25th race and in 2022 is now finally doing so once again – home hero Daniel Ricciardo having swapped a yellow-and-black Renault race suit for McLaren orange in the meantime.

But that’s far from the only thing that’s different this time around. Hopefully, some of the key changes in F1 since coronavirus first truly became part of our shared lexicon can play a role in making the coming weekend one of joy and celebration.

As Autosport walked through Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport on Tuesday morning, we recalled how a key concern two years ago had been if travellers had visited China, Iran or Italy – the countries experiencing the first horrors of the pandemic’s lockdowns and the risk of public healthcare services being overwhelmed.

How wonderful it was, this time, to only have the much-reduced ‘worry’ of where to collect a rapid antigen test – from which a negative result for new arrivals in Victoria means hotel quarantine can now quickly end.

A member of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation announces the 2020 event is cancelled

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

As we made our way through Tullamarine two years ago, however, back home the rest of Europe was bracing for what was happening so horribly in Italy to be replicated elsewhere. The situation even threatened the Italian-based F1 teams – Ferrari and AlphaTauri – being allowed to leave their home country, let alone travel across the world to compete in Australia.

There never was any F1 competition that weekend, of course. Once it was confirmed that a McLaren team member had tested positive for COVID-19 after the pre-event media day – gone from the three-day format, these days – a course of action was set in motion that would eventually lead to the 2020 Australian GP being cancelled and the F1 season put on hiatus.

‘Eventually’ is the key word. Although McLaren earned deserved praise for its decisive call to pull out of the Melbourne event immediately after the positive case (with 14 additional staff members having to quarantine in the city even after the rest of the paddock had gone home), a shambolic saga followed.

A late-night vote between the teams initially didn’t align numbers in favour of the race’s cancellation. That was until Toto Wolff received a call from overall Mercedes boss Ola Kallenius and the Silver Arrows squad was later withdrawn once Wolff had been left to make the key call. With only the Red Bull teams and Racing Point still in favour of carrying on, that low number meant the FIA could step in and call it all off.

As we made our way through Tullamarine two years ago, however, back home the rest of Europe was bracing for what was happening so horribly in Italy to be replicated elsewhere

Not that the message came through to fans until many hours later – including following an initial early-morning statement from race organiser Australian Grand Prix Corporation that the event would carry on even with no F1 running. Some fans therefore came along, only to later be denied entry.

Inside, the paddock was being packed up as rumours fizzed around – regarding the Bahrain and Vietnam races next under threat on the schedule, if a season opener in Baku would be most likely, and if F1’s very existence was threatened.

A packed press conference was called, where then F1 CEO Chase Carey – fresh off the plane from visiting the Hanoi race that now won’t happen – said F1 had “made the right decisions” in what was a “very fluid situation”. AGPC boss Andrew Westacott was visibly emotional as he spoke about the impact on his staff.

The FIA, F1 and AGPC make a final appearance before the series, along with the entire world, went into lockdown in 2020

Photo by: Dirk Klynsmith / Motorsport Images

The Melbourne race could never happen in 2020, even as F1 got a 17-event season in following its resumption at the Red Bull Ring four months later. The costs and impact of infrastructure being built on public roads meant 2021 was the earliest the race could return, but that was postponed and then scuppered by a combination of Australia’s slow vaccine rollout and the logistics challenge of then ongoing 14-day quarantine rules for all arrivals working within F1’s fast-paced calendar.

F1 being F1, COVID wasn’t the only issue up for debate here two years ago – all of which can now be reviewed in an altogether different light.

There was the pre-2020 Ferrari engine settlement and the fury of the teams not running its power, which abated in the following abject two seasons for the Scuderia, which lost its power punch until its recovery along with the new car regulations for this year.

Delaying those rule changes wouldn’t come until three months after the events on the ground in Melbourne, as F1 wrestled to keep its business on-track when mass-events were heavily restricted even when many lockdowns were eased.

Red Bull was going to protest DAS if Mercedes used it in Australia – and indeed it did just that on home turf that is missing just two of those letters. That perhaps foreshadowed the rivalry brewing between the two teams, even if it didn’t appear all that close when Mercedes’ efforts to out-aerodynamically-develop Ferrari’s expected engine grunt for 2020 resulted in one of the best and most-dominant cars ever produced: the W11.

The gap was closed as Mercedes opted to halt upgrades for that machine, which would go on to be the basis of the W12 – famously shorn of its performance edge by the changes to the rear floor rules for last season.

That call came in even before there had been a completed racing lap in 2020, but it ultimately knocked Mercedes off its championship double strides and ended the Racing Point/Aston Martin RP20 design saga. That car, which was largely carried over to the AMR21 per F1’s COVID cost-saving rules, lost even more downforce and time – having been the controversy of 2020’s pre-season.

Albert Park has undergone key modifications with the aim of improving racing at the circuit

Photo by: Australian Grand Prix Corporation

As F1 departed Melbourne two years ago, it was suggested that Albert Park would be resurfaced before the next event – something that hadn’t happened since the venue joined the F1 calendar in 1996. That has now occurred, but as part of a package of much wider changes.

The rights of Turns 1 and 3 have been widened to increase the lines available to the drivers – and therefore raise the possibility of passes, maybe between drivers that have been able to run side-by-side through the first corner. The Turn 6 right-hander at the start of the second sector has been massively widened – now a sweeping bend to be taken over 40mph quicker.

The chicane that used to follow is now gone, with the cars set to blast through a high-speed, closely-walled run to the renumbered Turns 9/10 super-fast left-then-right flicks and then head down the back straight to the widened Turn 11 – the right-hander now set to encourage top-speed passing, with extra positive camber.

The penultimate corner is also now wider – as is the pitlane, which could have its speed raised from 60km/h to 80km/h and therefore provide the teams with more pitstop strategy options given the reduced stop time.

The Turn 6 right-hander at the start of the second sector has been massively widened – now a sweeping bend to be taken over 40mph quicker

The stoppage of racing caused by the pandemic actually meant there was a chance for all this major work – which had been considered five years ago given Albert Park’s reputation for producing dull races with the quicker modern cars on a one-line track with very short braking zones – to go ahead. It began in early 2021 – with the resurfacing the last job – completed back in January.

It is still expected to offer low grip, being a temporary racing track, so Pirelli has brought its softest 2022 tyre – the C5 – as this weekend’s red-walled option. Intriguingly, the C4 step has been left out, with the teams having the C2 and C3 as hards and mediums this weekend, which could offer strategic variability with only moderate tyre wear predicted (the surface isn’t super abrasive and previous bumps are gone).

There has been much social media handwringing at the inclusion of four DRS zones for the returning race – with wings to be opened on the main straight, run to Turn 3, then the new swoop through the old chicane and then the back straight running out of the new Turn 10. This all pitches Turn 11 as the key overtaking opportunity and reflects the challenge of passing at Albert Park even with all these changes.

F1's return to Australia marks a full circle moment from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic

Photo by: Australian Grand Prix Corporation

The worry from some seems to be that there could now be too much passing – to go along with all the apparently bad (but clearly excellent) racing between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc in Bahrain and Jeddah. The weekend’s action will reveal all, but plenty of overtaking will always trump a procession.

The race is also set to take place in front of a bumper crowd. Although this can’t be a race-day record (154,000 from 1996) because of local labour shortages – a continued hangover from the pandemic with a lack of international students and skilled visa holders to adequately staff hospitality operations meaning the AGPC didn’t want to risk compromising the quality of its event, so capped Sunday numbers at 130,000. An aggregate crowd record could well be possible, however.

This follows a trend of sell-out and packed races as lockdowns end and humanity adjusts to living with COVID. People are so wonderfully keen to live having been prevented from doing so for so much of the last two years (and, in some parts of the world, sadly continue to have do so). Melbourne endured the world’s longest COVID lockdown, and so it is the fans attending this race that F1 should consider above all.

Some of them will be the same people who were denied entry in the chaotic scenes on that cloudy Friday morning in March 2020, when F1 did make the right call, having made the wrong one in deciding to travel to Melbourne at all – with other motorsport series, such as Formula E, and whole sports, for example the NBA, enacting quick season suspensions as the pandemic unfurled.

The terrible situation did deteriorate rapidly, but there’s a reason why Lewis Hamilton’s quip that “cash is king” resonated as it did in regards to why the Mercedes driver felt F1 had got itself into such a situation in the first place…

Now though, celebration is in the air, with new cars and drivers ready to entertain Melbourne. It’s waited a long time, gone out of its way to improve its own spectacle, so fully deserves F1’s love and attention this weekend.

Might there too be a future reward for the city? While a lucrative event for F1, Melbourne isn’t matching the financial might of the Middle East when it comes to paying to be the season opener (or finale). But with such a vibrant and sport-mad city, lacking in sport-washing aims, it would be a satisfying conclusion to soon see Melbourne restored as F1’s curtain-raiser.

What does F1 have in store for the long awaited return of the Australian GP?

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images