This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Australia
When Melbourne’s Albert Park hosted the first Formula One event of 1996, it was the beginning of a new era. Previously held on a street circuit in Adelaide, the Australian Grand Prix was traditionally the last race of the F1 season; now, with a new track in the heart of Melbourne’s inner suburbs, the country was kicking off F1’s global tour.
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You’d think being presented to a global audience hungry for the new season to start would have been an achievement that Melbourne’s people would have gotten solidly behind; that having the world view a beautiful vista of lake and palm trees with the high rises of the CBD in the near horizon would make all Australians celebrate the positive impact the race could have on our reputation; and that the nostalgia of the Australian Grand Prix returning to Albert Park – where it had been held for a few years as a non-F1 event in the 1950s – would draw people in.
You’d be wrong. Couldn’t be any more wrong, in fact.
When, in 1993, Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett, proudly announced that he had stolen the Australian Grand Prix away from Adelaide to be held in his state’s capital of Melbourne from 1996, a lot of people weren’t happy.
Adelaide was up in arms that their main international sporting event was being taken away from them. Melbourne has their Cup, they said; Melbourne has the Australian Open tennis; Melbourne has the Boxing Day cricket test and the AFL Grand Final. Can’t we just have this one thing?
And the people of Melbourne? They weren’t happy either. 20,000 people at an anti-grand prix rally unhappy, to be exact.
Most of the anger came from what a lot of people saw as the destruction of a public park for financial gain. And when legislation was created for the grand prix to be exempt from all other Acts of Parliament, the Save Albert Park organisation grew even larger.
This was in spite of a hundred million dollar upgrade to the parklands and sporting facilities to make way for the roads that would make up the F1 track.
And yet, in the face of widespread condemnation, Mr Kennett was not to be stopped, and a little over two years after announcing his coup, Albert Park hosted its first F1 grand prix.
The strange thing about the race was that, with the finale of the ’95 season being held in Adelaide, Australia had the honour of hosting back-to-back F1 events.
As for the race itself, the inaugural Melbourne Grand Prix is remembered for a horrifying crash for veteran English driver Martin Brundle. Brundle’s Jordan-Peugeot flipped through the air and broke in two when it landed upside down in the gravel trap at turn three. Incredibly he was uninjured and ran back to the pits to get into a spare car and restart the race.
“I was flat out in sixth doing about 290kph, so the closing speed was too high for me to do anything about it,” he said to the press at the time. “I was a passenger on a high-speed merry-go-round. I just concentrated on making sure I didn’t hit my head. The accident seemed to go on for a very long time.”
The winner of the grand prix was another Englishman in Damon Hill, but only after his teammate on debut, Jacques Villeneuve, had car trouble and dropped off the pace. Villeneuve would end his career having never triumphed on the Albert Park track, despite going so close at his first try.
You’d think, with the vast condemnation of the Australian Grand Prix moving to Albert Park in 1996, that the experiment may have been short lived, but no. This year, Melbourne celebrates its 20th anniversary with F1, and will host the race until at least 2023.
Looks like the grand prix won.
