I live in Nottinghamshire and spend much too much time on the Internet.
I live in Nottinghamshire and spend much too much time on the Internet.
Member since:04.10.2000
Reviews:258
Members who trust:8
This wonderful looking circuit is a great way to break the Winter F1 Grand Prix famine and return to regular fortnightly races.
Albert Park in Melbourne is the venue of the Australian Grand Prix and is always bathed in sunshine and extremely popular with everybody in the sport. The 5.3km circuit encircles the lake in the middle of the park and with the palm trees along the side of the track it is a very picturesque circuit.
During the rest of the year this street track is used by the public as a normal highway. Even with all the cleaning and preparation that goes on before the Grand Prix event this does mean that there are always some remnants of oil and muck on the track at the start of the practice sessions. It is only by about the start of the qualifying session that the road surface turns more into a Grand Prix circuit with a layer
of tyre rubber put down on the racing line.
The race is just over 300km long (58 laps) with a lap time of about 1.5 minutes, so a race is normally about 1.5 hours. The clockwise oval has 16 turns, a lot of which are quite technical, with braking from 180mph into 3rd gear turns. This leads to a lot of brake wear and in the past this had often led to a number of failures during the race. The high speed straights into slow corners does mean that overtaking is not too easy and unfortunately this does not always lead to the most exciting racing of the season.
However, Albert Park always produces very fast races, often with a few surprises as the start of the season can mean that the cars are not quite set up as the teams would like.
The qualifying days and the actual race normally leads to a full capacity crowd of over 100,000 spectators, a large number of whom are very passionate Ferrari fans due the large number of Italian descendants who live in Melbourne.
The only draw back for us is that the race runs in the early hours of the morning (UK time), but that is what TIVO and video recorders were made for. The challenge is making sure you do hear or see the result anywhere before watching the recorded race.
I particularly enjoy the Grand Prix at this circuit as it always seems to produce interesting races as it is the first race of the season. This race gives everyone the first opportunity to see the new cars in a race situation, any new drivers, the effects of any new regulations and any other changes that have been made over the closed season.
A lot of “scene setting” seems to happen at Melbourne and often the result of this race has a great effect on the teams and the drivers, particularly during the first half of the season. If you enjoy F1 racing then you really must see the race at this splendid circuit.
TRAGEDY.
As you are probably aware a race marshal was killed at the 2001 race following a collision between the two cars of Jacques Villeneuve and Ralf Schumacher. A wheel from one of the cars hit the marshal and caused fatal injuries. A similar incident happened at Monza in the previous season, where again a marshal was killed by a flying wheel.
These marshals do a fantastic job and the sport would not be possible without them, but two such deaths are surely not acceptable. I cannot believe that in such a high-tech sport it is not possible to keep the wheels attached to the car during/after an accident. Jacques Villeneuve walked away from the wrecked car with hardly a scratch due to the great emphasis that is put on the safety of the driver and now that same emphasis must be put onto protecting the officials and spectators of the sport. In this incident six spectators also had to receive medical treatment for injuries they sustained.
I know that this year a second tether has been added to the wheels to try to keep them attached, but it is obvious from this incident and from other crashes over the weekend these tethers are just not working. It must now be made a matter of urgency to sort this out.
If it is not possible to keep the cars together then the marshals must have more protection. The areas where they stand must have proper shielding so that they can still do their job, but not with the risk of losing their life.
I hope the organisers at Albert Park will already be looking at how they can improve the safety for marshals and will have implemented improvements before the race returns to Australia next year.
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Advantages: The atmosphere, sound, sight and smell of Formula One racing Disadvantages: In this particular race - the qualifying was the only disappointment
May 27th, 2001
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