Albert Park Circuit

The Albert Park Circuit is a racing venue that hosts one of the Formula One World Championship races - the Australian Grand Prix.

Albert Park Circuit and Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, which hosts the Canadian Grand Prix, are the only 2 street circuits in the Formula One calendar that are raced in the park. Other street circuits include the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, Marina Bay Street Circuit, Las Vegas Strip Circuit, Miami International Autodrome, Baku City Circuit, and Circuit de Monaco.

The Albert Park Circuit is situated around Albert Park Lake in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.  The circuit was first opened on November 20, 1953, but closed five years later on November 30, 1958. Then, the Albert Park Circuit was reopened again on March 7, 1996.

The circuit has an FIA Grade 1 license, and other series raced around here include FIA Formula 2, FIA Formula 3, Melbourne SuperSprint, Supercars Championship, and Australian Porsche Carrera Cup Championship.

What is interesting about the Albert Park Circuit is that even though the majority of the track consists of publicly accessible roads, the track has multiple medium and high-speed corners which are characteristics of dedicated racetracks.

On the other hand, Albert Park Circuit also keeps the nature of the street circuit with concrete barriers (built every year in preparation for the event) surrounding the track and limited run-off areas on multiple places of the track.

Albert Park circuit used to be one of the very few circuits in the calendar built right next to the water. It has gone through a small revision of the layout before the 2021 Australian Grand Prix. In the years 1996-2020, the layout of the circuit contained 16 corners.

The record holder of the best time - 1:24.125 is Michael Schumacher from 2004. After the revision in 2021, 2 turns have been eliminated to make the circuit faster, and the record has been broken by Sergio Perez.