Aus GP Trivia

15 March 2013

This year, Australia will host the season-opening Grand Prix for the 16th time, but that’s far from the only interesting piece of trivia about this ever-popular race. We have 22 other fast facts about the Aus GP …

Courtesy of www.formula1.com. 

• The 2013 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix marks the 29th time that Australia has hosted a round of the FIA Formula One World Championship. The first was held in Adelaide in 1985. However, according to the Australian Grand Prix Corporation Melbourne first hosted the full scale F1 in 1953 and that's why they are celebrating the 60 year anniversary this year. We suspect the difference in opinion is a matter of semantics but we're not quite sure why. If you have an opinion comment below.
• Melbourne’s Albert Park will stage the event for the 18th time in 2013. It first hosted the Australian Grand Prix in 1996.
• Michael Schumacher has won the most Australian Grands Prix, with all four of his wins coming in Melbourne (in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004). Jenson Button could equal the German’s record this year - he currently has three wins Down Under…
• McLaren are the most successful constructor in Australian Grand Prix history - they have 11 wins and 13 further podiums. However, since the race moved from Adelaide to Melbourne, McLaren and Ferrari have claimed six victories each…
• Mercedes engines have powered four of the last five Australian Grand Prix winners.
• Ayrton Senna holds the record for the most Australian Grand Prix pole positions - six, all of which were scored in Adelaide.
• Of the drivers on the grid in 2013, Jenson Button has led the most laps in Australia - 150 in total.
• Five drivers have celebrated their 100th Grand Prix start in Australia - Alan Jones and Patrick Tambay in 1985, Damon Hill in 1999, Jacques Villeneuve in 2002, and Nick Heidfeld in 2006.
• Only four drivers in history have started over 250 Grands Prix, but strangely enough two of them reached the 250 race starts milestone in Australia - Rubens Barrichello in 2008 and Michael Schumacher in 2010.
• Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton have very similar podium records at the Australian Grand Prix - all three have reached the podium four times, and each has stood on the top step once.
• If Kimi Raikkonen sets the fastest lap around Albert Park in 2013, he’ll equal Michael Schumacher’s record of five Australian Grand Prix fastest laps.
• Three engine manufacturers have won the Australian Grand Prix seven times - Ferrari, Renault and Mercedes.
• Drivers of nine nationalities have won the Australian Grand Prix. Great Britain can boast the most different winners (six - Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Eddie Irvine, David Coulthard, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button) and the most wins overall (ten).
• The longest Australian Grand Prix was the 1985 edition, which ran to 2 hours and 40.473 seconds. The shortest - and also the shortest Grand Prix in world championship history - was the 1991 race, which lasted just 24 minutes and 34.899 seconds before being abandoned because of heavy rain.
• No Australian has ever won the Australian Grand Prix. The best result for an Australian driver is the fourth place recorded by Mark Webber for Red Bull in 2012.
• Australia had the honour of hosting the 500th world championship Grand Prix, in Adelaide in 1990. It was won by Nelson Piquet for Benetton.
• Australia hosted the last race of Formula One racing’s famed ‘turbo era’ in 1988. The Honda-engined cars of Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Nelson Piquet swept the podium.
• Nigel Mansell is the oldest Australian Grand Prix winner - he was 41 years and 97 days old when he won the 1994 race for Williams. He remains the seventh-oldest Grand Prix winner of all time and the oldest race winner since Australian legend Jack Brabham took victory in South Africa in 1970.
• In Australia this weekend there will be two Mexican drivers (Sergio Perez and Esteban Gutierrez) on the grid for the first time since Pedro Rodriguez and Moises Solana started the 1968 Mexican Grand Prix.
• The last time there were at least four French drivers on the grid for a season-opening Grand Prix was 1994. Back then they were Jean Alesi, Erik Comas, Olivier Panis, Eric Bernard, and Luxembourg-born racer Bertrand Gachot, who raced with a French license. This year Romain Grosjean, Jean-Eric Vergne, Jules Bianchi and Charles Pic will represent France.
• Great Britain will have four drivers (Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Max Chilton, Paul di Resta) on the grid for the season-opening Grand Prix for the first time since 2008 (David Coulthard, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Anthony Davidson).
• In Australia, Kimi Raikkonen (who, along with Fernando Alonso, made his Formula One debut at Albert Park in 2001) will look to extend his sequence of 17 consecutive points finishes. The streak began at last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix.