The long-awaited 2022 comeback that presents a good omen for F1

Formula 1 returned to Australia with a weekend festival of sport which, in a world laid low by war and pandemic, was good for the soul. It was three years since Hamilton, Verstappen et al raced around the city’s Albert Park, two years since that 
ill-fated Friday 13th in 2020 when F1, the FIA and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation cancelled that year’s event to the disbelief of spectators queuing at the gates.

“I was there and couldn’t believe it,” said Craig, a diehard F1 fan who told me of his annual pilgrimage from Queensland’s Gold Coast. “I won’t even tell you what it cost me and I ended up spending the weekend with some disappointed fans drinking 
our sorrows away.”

But he had come back, and the disappointment of 2020 was being washed away in a blaze of Melbourne sunshine, packed grandstands, rumbling V8 Supercars and excited stall-holders selling merchandise by the box load. The eight-year-old girl sitting opposite me on the number 64 tram was counting Teslas.

“Look dad, that’s number three,” she said, adjusting her Lewis Hamilton cap.

Her 14-year-old sister was sitting across the carriage. She was sporting papaya orange McLaren headgear, a Daniel Ricciardo fan like her accompanying 
parents and grandfather.

“The girls made us promise to take
 them to the grand prix when F1 returned,” their mother told me. “They’ve got into F1 through social media, then Drive to Survive, and it’s just fantastic. I’d never have thought, having two girls, that we’d have a couple of F1 fans on our hands, but
 they love it.”

The Australian GP's long-awaited return was a hit with fans

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

A tram-based micro-survey of just how much has changed in F1, shifting in the make-up of Melbourne’s crowd. The city’s The Age newspaper commented F1’s demographic was younger and more gender-diverse.

Opposite the tram stop at Gate 10 is the suburb of Prahran where, in 1920, Tony Gaze was born. A decorated fighter ace during World War II, Squadron Leader 
Gaze befriended the Duke of Richmond
 and Gordon, owner of the land on which RAF Westhampnett was located, and convinced him to stage a motor race
 around its perimeter.

“So you’re telling me the Goodwood
 race track was invented here in Melbourne?” asked David, 73, as we walked into the circuit. “Does anyone else know 
that our grand prix should be twinned 
with the Goodwood Members’ Meeting
 this weekend?“

The fans here understand motor racing. They love Formula 1, know its history and see its return to Albert Park as a sign that the world is righting itself.

"For a while I wasn’t sure we’d even see this year’s event go ahead but F1 and the race organisers have done a terrific job. Have you seen how many people there are?" Alan Jones

Sam, Greg and Nathan had flown down from Brisbane, getting up at 3.30am on the Friday to make sure they were on the first available flight. A two-and-a-half-hour plane journey, the equivalent of flying across Europe. They dropped their bags off and headed straight to the circuit. An Australian Grand Prix regular, 
Sam had already observed a marked 
shift in Formula 1’s popularity.

“I’ve noticed there’s a lot more engagement through the Drive To Survive series on Netflix. I remember coming 
down here years ago and the track would never fully sell out, but obviously this 
year – with the impact of a few years of Drive To Survive – it’s completely sold out. I definitely think it’s due to the series. A lot of people I have been talking to have got into it because of Netflix.”

Nathan, on his first visit to Formula 1, 
was, to borrow a much-used Aussie adjective, ‘stoked’. There were a lot of 
stoked people in Melbourne.

“This is wild,” he said. “Honestly it’s a lot, lot bigger than I expected it to be. I’ve been to other motorsport events around Australia and have always known that Formula 1 is the biggest thing on earth at the top of motorsport, but this is wild.”

Daniel Ricciardo was in demand all weekend at his home race

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Familiar faces were all around. Mark Webber was having a busy home race, moving from television broadcasting commitments to sponsor appearances, constantly in demand from fans. Daniel Ricciardo, somehow managing to project his winning smile through a McLaren-branded face mask, was mobbed irrespective of whether he was inside the paddock or out.

Australia worships its sport stars, wraps them in its nationhood. This huge country, with a land mass 37 times larger than Great Britain but a population almost 60% smaller, regards the Webbers and Ricciardos of this world as their ultimate ambassadors. The state funeral of famed cricketer Shane Warne, held ten days before the grand prix, illustrated that. The Aussie fans cherish their heroes.

“It’s really good to see it back,” Alan Jones told me, the 1980 world champion in some demand from autograph hunters. “For a while I wasn’t sure we’d even see this year’s event go ahead but F1 and the race organisers have done a terrific job. Have you seen how many people there are?”

The answer was yes, you couldn’t help but notice the volume of fans. A tidal wave of colour and enthusiasm generating a weekend record for Melbourne’s grand prix and statistics which delighted the AGP Corporation’s CEO Andrew Westacott.

PLUS: How the Australian GP gave F1 a much needed tonic

“It has been three years since we last staged the GP and there’s been 41 events that F1 has been to around the world [since Melbourne 2020 was cancelled],” he said. “The key thing we have done here and 
now is remind F1 of how good an event
 we put on. It was worth the wait, and we have set the bar very high for other events.”

Australia, along with New Zealand, has had a rather different pandemic experience from most of the world, one which has given Westacott and his team more than a few headaches. While the COVID-19 virus spread westwards from Asia, through the Gulf and into Europe and North America, the Australian and New Zealand governments set out to prevent it ever gaining a foothold.

The result was a fortress mentality. Australia closed its borders, applied a
 strict two-week hotel quarantine for
those provided with travel exemption
 – an experience this writer endured in January 2021 – and kept pushing back 
its date for reopening.

An initially slow vaccine “stroll-out” didn’t help, but the result of the Australian approach is undeniable: 6569 deaths from COVID compared with 170,107 in the UK and 6.1 million globally. It meant that Prime Minister Scott Morrison kept rigidly to his closed-border strategy.

Australian Grand Prix Corporation CEO Westacott was delighted with the comeback event

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

This approach gave the AGP Corporation an inability to plan with any degree of certainty. The cancelled 2020 event was followed by the inevitable repeat in 2021, plans to postpone that race until later in the season scuppered by the Morrison Government’s refusal to reopen the country’s borders until vaccination reached 80% of the population.

Ultimately, the decision to move this year’s Australian Grand Prix from its usual slot as the opening race of the season was the right one. It gave everyone an additional month with which to play, for the Melbourne organisers to prepare, for fans to buy tickets and book their travel. With an eye to the future and improving the racing in Melbourne, the organisers
 went ahead with remodelling and resurfacing the track. It was a move
 which F1 and the FIA acknowledged.

PLUS: How decisions Ferrari aced and Red Bull regretted led to Leclerc’s Melbourne masterclass

Difficulties in recruiting the large numbers of staff needed to host the event caused Westacott to limit race day ticket sales to 130,000. In March he admitted that this year’s event would fail to beat the record 156,000 race-day spectators who attended the inaugural GP at Albert Park in 1996.

Whatever the figures, the success of the 2022 event bodes well for the future of the GP, whether in Melbourne or elsewhere. At present Melbourne has a contract to host the race until 2025 and is keen to extend

He need not have worried. Thursday’s supports attracted 55,107 fans, rising to 112,446 on Friday, 123,247 on Saturday and 128,314 for Sunday, the third-highest race-day attendance in Melbourne’s F1 history.

The total, just shy of 420,000, was heralded by the AGP Corporation as the largest ever attendance for an F1 event, although those with longer memories were able to recall that 520,000 spectators attended Adelaide’s final GP in 1995.

The relief on Sunday evening was palpable. F1 had successfully returned to Melbourne after an absence of three years, two cancellations, and some cost. According to one source the AGP Corporation had been forced to pay F1 far more than it would have ideally wished, in part due to the insurance implications of the cancelled events.

Whatever the figures, the success of the 2022 event bodes well for the future of the GP, whether in Melbourne or elsewhere. At present Melbourne has a contract to host the race until 2025 and is keen to extend.

Melbourne is keen to extend its contract after the successful 2022 event

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

The politics of Australia’s federation are such that rivalry between states and their capital cities is always intense. Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria, is clearly determined to support Westacott’s ambition to keep the race in Melbourne, particularly in light of the New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet bidding to move the race to Sydney.

“We can never control what other jurisdictions can do,” Westacott told
 The Age, “but if you give your partners and stakeholders exemplary service, great value for money, full entertainment and professionalism up to the standards of what they want to deliver on a global basis, you are going to make it very hard for them to look anywhere else.”

In other words, Melbourne will be a hard act to follow, even if the success of this year’s event attracts envious glances from other state capitals. Meanwhile, fans can already register their interest for the 2023 race,
 sure in the knowledge that F1 is in a healthy state Down Under.

Everyone is stoked.

After two tough years, Australia's return brought a welcome feeling of normalcy

Photo by: Alfa Romeo