Albert Park

Albert Park is a 5.278 km street circuit made up of public roads around the lake in a park a few kilometres south of Melbourne's city centre. The lap is almost flat and has few true straights, so it rewards smooth, committed driving and a car that copes with a low-grip, dusty surface at the start of the weekend. The layout was reworked for the 2022 return: the old Turn 9–10 chicane was removed, Turns 1, 3, 6 and 15 were widened and Turn 13 was reshaped. Turn 6 alone was opened up by about 7.5 m, which lifted its minimum speed from roughly 149 km/h to 219 km/h and made the lap several seconds quicker.

The best chance to pass is at the end of the fast run along Lakeside Drive, which is more than a kilometre long. Overtaking is still hard elsewhere: cars following closely lose front-end grip through the medium-speed corners, and the walls are close, so incidents and safety cars are common. Melbourne's changeable weather can add rain, wind or a sharp temperature drop between sessions.

Motor racing at Albert Park goes back to the 1950s; the circuit opened in November 1953 and the park's roads hosted Australian Grands Prix in the 1950s. Formula 1 returned in 1996 after the Australian Grand Prix had spent 1985–1995 on the street circuit in Adelaide. The move to Melbourne was contested locally, but the first race went ahead in March 1996 and was won by Damon Hill for Williams.

Since then the race has opened most F1 seasons. Michael Schumacher won in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004, and Melbourne has produced surprise winners such as Giancarlo Fisichella in 2005 and Jenson Button in 2009 for Brawn GP in its first race. Races were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. The layout changes made in 2022 helped make the race more competitive, and the current contract runs to 2035.

In 2026 the circuit again hosted the season opener. George Russell took pole and won for Mercedes, ahead of team-mate Kimi Antonelli and Charles Leclerc, on the first weekend of the new regulations and the debut of Audi and Cadillac. Max Verstappen set the fastest race lap (1:22.091) and the event drew a record 483,934 fans over four days.