The 58-lap race was won by Jenson Button for the Brawn GP team after starting from pole position. Rubens Barrichello finished second in the other Brawn GP car, with Jarno Trulli third for Toyota.
The Grand Prix was contested by 20 drivers, in 10 teams of two. The teams, also known as constructors, were Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Renault, Brawn-Mercedes, Force India-Mercedes, BMW Sauber, Toyota, Red Bull Racing-Renault, Williams-Toyota and Toro Rosso-Ferrari. The race saw the debut of Brawn GP, whose owner Ross Brawn had bought out Honda Racing F1. The Brawn cars were driven by Honda's former drivers Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button. The race also saw the debut of Sébastien Buemi, driving for Toro Rosso. Buemi became the first Swiss driver in Formula One since Jean-Denis Délétraz in 1995. Buemi replaced Sebastian Vettel who had moved to Red Bull Racing replacing the retired David Coulthard.
Prior to the opening race of the season, McLaren and Renault planned to boycott the season opener due to money not being paid to the teams. However, the boycott was avoided and both teams arrived in Melbourne for the opening round. In a second dispute, several teams protested to the stewards about the legality of the Brawn, Toyota and Williams cars, with arguments that the diffuser on the cars were illegal. The protest was thrown out by stewards. However, the teams that initially protested, had appealed against the decision, with a FIA International Court of Appeal hearing set for after the Malaysian Grand Prix. At the hearing, the diffusers were deemed legal.
Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first was held on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes with weather conditions dry throughout. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour, and was also dry throughout. The Williams cars of Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima set the pace, ending up first and second with only five-hundredths of a second splitting the two. The only other driver that was within half a second of them was Kimi Räikkönen's Ferrari, who was marginally behind Nakajima.
The qualifying session was split into three parts. The first part of qualifying runs for 20 minutes and eliminates the cars that finished the session 16th or lower. The second part of qualifying lasts for 15 minutes and eliminates cars that finished in positions 11 to 15. The final part of qualifying lasts for 10 minutes and determines the positions from first to tenth, and effectively decides who starts the Grand Prix in pole position. After dominating all three practice sessions on Friday, and again on Saturday morning, Rosberg did not fare so well in qualifying, managing a time only good enough for fifth position. The Brawn cars of Button and Barrichello dominated qualifying with the Brazilian finishing first in the first two parts of the session. In the third session, Button managed to beat his teammate's time by three-tenths of a second, and secured the pole position.
The conditions on raceday were similar to what had been seen on both Friday and Saturday, the air temperature at 25 °C (77 °F); clear skies throughout, with the race beginning at 17:00 AEDT. Button led away and retained his pole position lead into turn one. He was closely followed by Vettel, Rosberg, Massa, Kubica and Räikkönen. Those six led away and were unaffected by the chaos that occurred behind, in turn one. After near-stalling, Barrichello had dropped from second to ninth, and challenged up the inside of Webber's Red Bull as they entered turn one. After being hit from behind, Barrichello's left front tyre impacted with the right-hand sidepod of Webber's car which half-spun the Australian into the BMW Sauber of Heidfeld. Once Barrichello had emerged relatively unscathed, Webber impacted on the front left of Kovalainen's McLaren causing irreparable damage to the left front suspension of the Finn's car. At turn three, Massa attempted a move down the inside of Rosberg, forcing the German off course and as a result, falling behind the Brazilian. At the end of the lap, Webber, Sutil and Heidfeld all pitted to repair damage caused in the first corner incident.
Further down the field, reigning champion Hamilton was progressing through the field having started eighteenth. After the first corner incident, he moved up to 13th at the end of the first lap. He passed Bourdais for 12th on lap two, Fisichella for 11th on lap three, and broke into the top ten, after passing Buemi on lap four. Out front, Button was beginning to establish a lead of over four seconds by the time he set the fastest lap on lap six, with a lap of 1:28.787. Vettel was still running second ahead of Massa, Kubica, Räikkönen with Rosberg completing the top six. Hamilton attempted to pass Nelson Piquet Jr. for ninth, doing so at Turn 13.
On lap ten, Rosberg attempted a move on Räikkönen into turn one, and succeeded to move up into fifth place on track. In the process, Räikkönen was slowed up by the German's move, allowing Barrichello to close up on the straight that leads into Turn 3. Barrichello's car snaked under brakes, and clipped the back of Räikkönen's car, causing more damage to his car. Räikkönen was forced wide by the hit, and Barrichello's momentum initiated a passing move into Turn 4, succeeding and moving into sixth place. The Finn pitted at the end of the lap, changing from the option tyre, onto the prime compound and did not change compounds again for the remaining distance.
Following the race, Jarno Trulli was under investigation for allegedly passing Lewis Hamilton under the safety car. The stewards decided that Trulli regained his position overtaking Hamilton during a safety car period, having run off the track when the safety car was out. Trulli was initially penalised 25 seconds, moving him down to 12th. However, after an investigation and stewards' inquiry on 2 April 2009, Hamilton and McLaren were found to have provided misleading information. Hamilton was disqualified from the race results, and Trulli was reinstated to third place.
Button secured a debut victory for Brawn after leading the race from start to finish. He led home teammate Barrichello as they completed a Brawn one-two.
Barrichello picked up his first podium since the 2008 British Grand Prix, and his highest finish since the 2005 United States Grand Prix. He praised the strength of his Brawn car, as he was involved in several incidents during the race.
Trulli was pleased with his third place on the road.
Cars that used the KERS system are marked with "‡"
Qualifying
^1 Both Toyotas were demoted to the back of the grid for running illegal rear wings and opted to start from the pit lane. ^2 Lewis Hamilton was given a five-place grid penalty for gearbox change.
Race
^3 Lewis Hamilton and McLaren were disqualified from the Grand Prix after the stewards found that they had provided deceptive information about the circumstances under which Jarno Trulli passed Hamilton under the safety car. ^4 Jarno Trulli was issued a 25-second penalty for overtaking Hamilton under the safety car, but was later reinstated back into third, after Hamilton was disqualified for misleading the stewards.
Championship standings after the race
Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.
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