Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, is one of the continent's most southrely cities, located across the Bass Straight from Tasmania. Victoria is known as the Garden State, for its tree-lined boulevards and beautiful parks.
The Melbourne Grand Prix circuit was built to run through Albert Park for the Australian Grand Prix race of 1996. Much to the chagrin of the local "Save Albert Park" campaign and apart from reprofiling, it has remain unchanged since then. The layout of the track is more demanding on the drivers than the average street circuit. The 5.303Km track is fairly open and doesn't feature any significant straight. A predominance of 75- to 90-degree corners, however, makes set-up, after the teams' pre-season work on fast tracks, a lottery.
Damon Hill had consigned his disagreeable memories of Adelaide to history and scooped a victory in the final Grand Prix held there, in 1995. Then he repeated the feat in the opening race at Melbourne. Millions of TV viewers will remember the 1996 outing for its images of Martin Brundle's dramatic barrel roll on the first start, if not for the sight of him climbing from his ravaged Jordan and sprinting for the pits to take the restart in the spare car.
The next two seasons were dominated by Mclaren, David coulthard getting 1997 campaign off to a flying start with his first win for Mclaren, ending the team's three-year drought. Its previous race victory had been Ayrton Senna's win at 1993 Australian Grand Prix, his last evr win. In 1998 coulthard looked to be on course again until he controversially slowed to allow team-mate Mika Hakkinen to take the chequered flag, thus helping the finnish driver to his first world championship. To round off the millennium Ferrari scored a double at Melbourne, Eddie Irvine winning the last race of the 20th century and Michael Schumacher the first of the new one.
Michael Schumacher continue his winning streak at the Albert Park in 2001 and 2002 as well. The 2001 race also sawthree drivers, Fernando Alonso; Kimi Räikkönen and Juan Pablo Montoya, all making their Formula One debuts during this race. The next year, 2003, saw Coulthard again win for McLaren in a race held in variable conditions. Normal service was resumed in 2004 with the Ferraris of Schumacher and Barrichello running rampant – within two laps of Friday practice, Schumacher had obliterated the Albert Park lap record, and sailed to a crushing win. In 2005, the race was won by Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella after a storm during Saturday qualifying produced a topsy-turvy grid. Barrichello and Fisichella’s teammate Fernando Alonso came through the field from 11th and 13th on the grid respectively to join pole-sitter Fisichella on the podium. In 2006, Alonso took his first Australian win in an accident-marred race that featured four safety car periods. In 2007 Lewis Hamilton led his first F1 race and eventually finished in third place. Kimi Räikkönen was in 1st place for the whole of the race except for when he pitted. Making history as being the first person to win their Ferrari debut since Nigel Mansell in 1989. Kimi Räikkönen also achieved a triple, a win, pole and fastest lap.
Source: FORMULA ONE: The story of Grand Prix Racing by Behram Kapadia
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