Australian Grand Prix 2012 Live Stream, Melbourne F1 Albert Park Webcast, Weather

Australian Grand Prix 2012 Live Stream, Melbourne F1 Albert Park Webcast, Weather


Melbourne is the home of the Australian Grand Prix, a motor race held annually and is held to be the pinnacle of motor racing in Australia. The Grand Prix is the oldest surviving motor racing competition held in Australia having been held 75 times since it was first run at Phillip Island in 1928. Since 1985 the race has been a round of the FIA Formula One World Championship. It is presently held at the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit at Albert Park in Melbourne. Prior to its inclusion in the World Championship it was held at a multitude of venues in every state of Australia. It was a centre piece of the Tasman Series between 1964 and 1972 and was a round of the Australian Drivers' Championship on many occasions between 1957 and 1983. It became part of the Formula One World Championship in 1985 and was held at the Adelaide Street Circuit in Adelaide, South Australia from that year to 1995, before moving to Melbourne in 1996.

Albert Park, within easy reach of the Melbourne central business district, became home to the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. A 16-turn circuit, which measures 5.3 kilometres in its current guise, was built utilising a combination of public roads and a car park within the park. The circuit is renowned as being a smooth and high-speed test for Formula One teams and drivers. Its characteristics are similar to the only other street circuit set in a public park currently used in the Formula One World Championship, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal which hosts the Canadian Grand Prix.

The move of the Australian Grand Prix to Melbourne saw a change in the time of year that the F1 teams and personnel made their annual voyage Down Under. Adelaide, for each of its 11 years, was the final race of the F1 season, usually in October or November, while Melbourne has been the first race of the season in every year since 1996 with the exception of 2006, when it was the third race of the year to allow for the Commonwealth Games to take place in the city, and 2010. As such, the Albert Park circuit has seen the Formula One debuts of many drivers in the last decade.