Australian Preview: Facts & Stats

The Formula One paddock descends on Australia at an unprecedented time of the season.

Albert Park, the traditional curtain raiser since 1996, has of course been moved to a one-off April date, in order to avoid clashing with Melbourne's successful hosting of the Commonwealth Games. That means this weekend is the first time the Australian Grand Prix hasn't either opened or closed an F1 season since its addition to the calendar in 1985.

Despite first coming to the world championship schedule only ten years ago, Albert Park played host to Formula One machinery as long ago as 1953, when races were run in the opposite direction to today.

The 1956 event was won by Stirling Moss aboard the legendary Maserati 250F, and it was the last time the Australian GP was held there until 1996. In the next 27 years, the race was held at no fewer than twelve other venues, before Adelaide became its permanent home.

Regular stat watchers will already be aware of Nico Rosberg's record-breaking start to his F1 career, but there would be added significance if he were to win this weekend, as Rosberg Senior's last F1 win was at the inaugural '85 event. Keke Rosberg also led most of his farewell appearance in 1986, until a puncture curtailed his afternoon. Of the 164 Australian GP laps that featured Keke, he led 128 (78%) of them.

A father-and-son combination have already taken Australian GP wins, albeit in the non-championship era. Stan Jones took the chequered flag at Longford in 1959 (also driving a Maserati 250F), and that was followed in 1980 by Alan Jones's victory at Calder Park for Williams, in a bizarre F1/F5000 crossover event in which only three F1 cars actually showed up.

That win came in Jones's championship-winning year. The only other champion from Australia is Jack Brabham, who took back-to-back successes for Cooper in 1959 and 1960, before becoming the only man ever to win the title in a car of his own construction, in 1966.

This Sunday's race falls on the 80th birthday of the man affectionately known as "Black Jack", who was the first racing driver to receive a knighthood in 1985.

When Brabham took his final F1 victory, at Kyalami in 1970, he was a sprightly 43 years old. From that day to this, only once has a forty-something taken an F1 championship win, and it happened to be in Australia - Nigel Mansell at Adelaide in 1994, aged 41.

Mansell had a role on both occasions the title has been decided in Australia. In that '94 race, he took pole ahead of championship protagonists Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill, and took the win after their collision.

However, arguably the most replayed footage of Mansell's career is from the title shoot-out in 1986, when he suffered his dramatic tyre blowout, exactly one lap after Keke Rosberg had suffered his similar (if far less dramatic) failure.

When Mansell's teammate Nelson Piquet was called in for a precautionary tyre stop, it gifted the win to Alain Prost, who clinched the first back-to-back titles since the aforementioned Brabham in 1959-60. Adelaide '86 is also notable as the last time three drivers were involved in a last-round decider.

In 1989, this race was the scene of the greatest drive in the career of Satoru Nakajima. Driving under pouring rain, and in his last start for Lotus, Naka-san, starting 23rd, unleashed an amazing drive to finish fourth, setting the only fastest lap of his career in doing so.

By the end, the Japanese driver was less than five seconds away from the podium, after a season in which he had failed to score points, and in a car which neither he nor three-time world champion Nelson Piquet could even qualify for that year's Belgian GP. It wasn't until Adelaide 1990 that Piquet found himself back on the top step of the podium, in what was the 500th F1 championship race.

Nelson Piquet (Benetton-Ford B191) in the 1991 Australian Grand Prix. His final Grand Prix was also the shortest in history © LAT

When Nelson arrived at the circuit in 1991, he was facing his 204th and final Grand Prix. He didn't look like a man on the verge of retirement as he outqualified rookie teammate Michael Schumacher - the only time in the first four years of the German's career that he suffered such an indignity.

The race itself saw rainfall even more severe than in 1989, and once organizers threw the red flag after 14 laps, they did not attempt a restart, making it the shortest GP in history (52.880 kilometres, or less than 25 minutes of racing).

A year on from that debacle, Gerhard Berger won for McLaren, a victory that remains the last in any capacity for Honda in Formula One. McLaren's 1993 Adelaide win made them the most successful constructor in history at that time, but that footnote has long since been forgotten, as it was also the 41st and final win of Ayrton Senna's career.

Senna had won 35 races for Mclaren in the previous six seasons, but after his departure, the team had to wait 50 races for their next one - David Coulthard's at Albert Park in 1997. Mclaren then finished 1-2 at the same track in 1998, clinching Bridgestone's first F1 win, 12 months after the Japanese tyre maker made its full-time F1 debut.

Bridgestone's rival, French company Michelin, will start its 200th Grand Prix this weekend, on a circuit which has brought the French tyre maker some notable successes recently. The 2003 race was the first time in 19 years that featured an all-Michelin podium, while for last year's race, Michelin runners locked out the top 10 in qualifying for the first time since Jarama 1981.

Giancarlo Fisichella's pole position came 106 starts after his previous one, breaking Riccardo Patrese's 92-race wait between Italy 1983 and Hungary 1989. Also featuring in the top ten were Red Bull who, by qualifying both cars in the top six, had the best debut showing for a constructor since an all-March front row at Kyalami in 1970.

They then both scored in the race, something which their predecessors Jaguar Racing never once managed in their five seasons of F1. On the flipside, Bridgestone-shod Ferrari missed the top 10 for the first time since Silverstone 1993.

By winning last year, Fisichella left Melbourne as the first Italian to lead the championship since Michele Alboreto in 1985, something he will aim to repeat this weekend.