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 Motorsport 
Monday, December 19 2022
Aus GP boss to bow out with record-breaking contract and sellout crowd  but not the first round

‘Round 1’ and ‘Australian Grand Prix’ just seem to go together — or they did, anyway.

For almost its entire tenure to date Melbourne has hosted the opening race of the Formula 1 season, with the motorsport world descending on Albert Park for a sunny sporting festival to kick off the battle for racing’s biggest prize.

It took a pandemic to break the tradition. The wealthier races in the Middle East have muscled in, and with pre-season testing now tending to take place in the warmer climes of Bahrain, the sport has decided it’s just easier to open proceedings in the desert rather than Down Under.

The grand prix’s newest contract extension, announced on Thursday and taking the event all the way out to 2037, further slackened Melbourne’s grasp on the opening race.

In June Melbourne was promised the coveted round 1 slot for 2024 and 2025 plus another three years at least.

That’s been reduced to “at least four” first-round races, and the Victorian government was conspicuous in announcing that Saudi Arabia had taken its place as the curtain raiser in 2024 — a slip met with raised eyebrows on the Red Sea.

Melbourne had been assured of the 2024 starting rights on the assumption that Ramadan would preclude both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia from opening that year and in 2025.

But the Islamic calendar’s holiest month starts on 10 March in 2024. With 2023’s start date of 5 March setting a precedent for timing, Jeddah could squeeze its way back into the frame on a hypothetical 1–3 March slot.

Melbourne is still likely to take the first round in 2025, when Ramadan will occupy the entirety of March, and 2026 is also a possibility, when Eid-ul-Fitr will leave only two weekends remaining at the end of the month.

Speaking to Fox Sports, Australian Grand Prix Corporation CEO Andrew Westacott accepted the terms had changed, though he rejected the characterisation of an extra two years on the contract as compensation for separating Australia from its traditional first-round slot.

“I won’t ascribe that or assign that to any particular point other than to say it was a mutually beneficial position reach,” he said.

“There’s a lot that can happen between now and 2037, and I’m sure that might have a couple of adjustments and changes, but by and large the key thing I’d say emphatically is Melbourne will be one of the first three races.”

But maybe the better question is: does it really matter?

Some had predicted losing the prestigious first slot on the calendar would be the beginning of the end of a race that had suffered dwindling crowd numbers in the previous decade.

Instead it’s been the opposite.

Last year’s race, the first since the pandemic, hosted the biggest attendance in Melbourne’s history, with more than 419,000 people streaming through the gates over four days, including 128,294 on Sunday alone.

Maybe round 3 is the new round 1.

“Clearly it’s a wonderful arrangement for Formula 1 [and] it’s a wonderful arrangement for the state of Victoria given the sellout position we’re going to have for the second year in a row in April 2023,” Westacott said.

“I’ve always been an advocate of the first race. I’m equally an advocate of an early race slot, and it proved this year not to be detrimental, therefore I’m quite open-minded about it.”

Of course the Netflix docudrama Drive to Survive was part of the booming interest in Melbourne, as was the so-called ‘post-lockdown’ syndrome that drove virtually every Victorian event in 2022 to new heights as people embraced the forgotten joy of being outside their homes for more than an hour a day.

But those rules don’t apply in 2023. The pandemic is shrinking in the rear-view mirror and inflation is burning holes in wallets, yet demand appears to be even greater for next year’s race.

When 2023 tickets went on sale earlier this month, Sunday sold out in less than four hours. Saturday tickets are practically all gone too, and Friday isn’t far behind.

The pandemic bounce and new horde of Netflix-bred fans might have been behind 2022, but Westacott said backing it up in 2023 is a testament to the event itself.

“I was surprised [Sunday sold out in] three to four hours,” Westacott admitted. “But I wasn’t surprised that it was less than a day or two.

“We’ve got to get the product right. I mean, if people have a crappy time — a poor fan experience — then that wouldn’t have happened.

“What we saw was that every bit of entertainment and track excitement meant that people wanted to come back again.

“They did have a wonderful experience, they loved coming back, and so it didn’t surprise me that we sold out on Sunday and we will still sell out on Saturday with the small allocation coming on in the new year, and I think we’ll sell out late January on the Friday.”

That growing interest has converted itself into a contract extension of unprecedented proportions.

Off the back of this year’s sold-out Sunday, Formula 1 and Melbourne inked a 10-year deal spanning 2026 to 2035. This week it announced another extension, keeping the grand prix in Victoria until at least 2037 — 15 years from now.

Melbourne, only a few short years ago written off by some disaffected parts of the city as a doomed event, is now in possession of the longest contract of any circuit on the Formula 1 calendar.

It’s quite the legacy for Westacott, who announced shortly after the new contract extension that the 2023 race would be his last at the helm after what will be more than 12 years in the CEO role and 17 years with grand prix.

“I’m proud of that,” he said. “But I certainly don’t put that down to myself or one individual or anything; I think it’s the sum of all the parts, and the parts are first and foremost everyone who’s ever worked with the grand prix corporation, the Victorian government and just the way we put on events in Melbourne and our approach to doing them to a world-class standard.

“I’ve been working at the grand prix corporation since 2006, and I love the business to bits, I love why we exist so much.

“Things are in great shape. We’ve got a strong board, we’ve got a strong contract, we’ve got strong crowds and a strong event, and therefore I felt it was the right time.

“At a point in time I’m not going to be here for another 15 years — another 10 years would probably be too much — therefore I came to the assessment along with my family and so on that I wanted to ensure I was handing on succession to the right people and allowing the right amount of time for the staff to really grow into their roles as they are and also for the successor to come into the position and run the place.

“It’s been occupying my mind for a number of months, but really in dialogue more recently with my chairman, Paul Little, and the board, who I just love working for … and that’s materialised in the announcement.”

The 2023 Australian Grand Prix will run from 31 March to 2 April. This week the FIA also published the Formula 1 session times for the weekend.

Friday will feature two hour-long practice sessions at 12:30pm and 4:00pm.

Saturday follows the same format, with final practice at 12:30pm and qualifying at 4:00pm.

Lights out is scheduled for 3pm on Sunday.

The support schedule is yet to be finalised but will feature both Supercars and the Porsche Carrera Cup alongside Formula 2 and Formula 3.

The Supercars and Carrera Cup series will also run on Thursday.

Posted by: AT 02:57 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
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