The recent Formula One Australian Grand Prix achieved a record four-day attendance in Melbourne of 444,631, as reported by Speedcafe.com.
Confirmed:
- Crowd surpassed 2022 attendance by 25,517
- Figure also beats the highest crowd of the 2022 season, when 440,000 attended the US Grand Prix
- Thursday crowd of 60,832 highest since 2014
- Friday and Saturday achieved record attendance of 122,927 and 129,478 respectively
- Race-day crowd of 131,124 is second-highest on record
Context: The 2022 attendance of 419,114 across the four-day weekend was, at the time, a record for a Formula One race in Melbourne. However, the Albert Park circuit still has some way to go to claim the overall attendance record for an Australian Grand Prix, with the last ever race held in Adelaide in 1995 achieving a reported attendance of 520,000.
The three-day attendance record in Formula One belongs to the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, which last season recorded an attendance of 400,000 from Friday to Sunday at last season's United States Grand Prix.
Comment: Andrew Westacott, outgoing chairman of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC), predicted last year: “We set the bar very high in 2022. It was the bookend of Coivid after the awful events of March 13, 2020 and everyone has now seen that Formula One puts on a great show in Melbourne. To have Formula Two [and] Formula Three there as well, I think we’re going to actually surpass the numbers that we had in 2022.”
Coming next: Formula One is now in the midst of an unplanned four-week break, after deciding against a replacement for the Chinese Grand Prix, which was set to run on 16th April. The next race weekend takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 28th to 30th April, which could see the debut of an all-new weekend format.