The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) announced in November 2013 its intention to introduce FIA Formula 4 to Australia. The official launch followed on 12 March 2014, with cars specified as using the French Mygale chassis and Ford EcoBoost engine. The series was conceived to run alongside V8 Supercars events, giving junior drivers national exposure on major championship weekends. Cameron McConville served as original Category Director, with Karl Reindler filling the role of Driver Coach and Driving Standards Observer.
Jayco, the Australian recreational vehicle manufacturer, came on board as naming rights sponsor in December 2014 under a three-year agreement. The first competitive round was held at the Reid Park Street Circuit in Townsville on 11 July 2015. AGI Sport's Will Brown won the category's opening race, while Jordan Lloyd of Team BRM claimed the overall round result. Lloyd went on to become the inaugural champion and collected a $150,000 prize through Jayco's Road To The World initiative, which helped fund a USF2000 seat for him in 2016 and a Formula 3 test with Carlin Motorsport.
Grid numbers were persistently thin throughout the series' first run. The Townsville opener drew thirteen cars, a total that was not exceeded until 2019 and then only once. The 2018 season never fielded more than eleven cars per round, and most rounds of the 2019 season ran with just eight. On 4 September 2019 it was announced that the championship would not continue in 2020. Notably, both Jack Doohan and Oscar Piastri — the two Australians who went on to reach Formula 1 from that era — chose to contest overseas F4 championships rather than the domestic series.
On 28 November 2023 it was confirmed that China-based promoter Top Speed, which also runs the Formula Regional Middle East Championship, Formula Regional Asian Championship, and other Formula 4 series in the region, would promote a revived Australian championship. The reborn series was structured as a Southern Hemisphere autumn-to-winter campaign (May to September), allowing the cars to be sourced from Top Speed's other championships. Four rounds were planned on Australian circuits, with a spring finale in Malaysia.
For 2025, promotion passed to AGI Sport, an Australian company with a long history of running championship-winning Australian F4 teams. The new name AU4 Australian Championship was announced in February 2025.
The original championship used the Mygale chassis in carbon fibre monocoque construction, powered by a 1.6-litre turbocharged Ford EcoBoost engine. The revived series introduced the Tatuus F4-T421 chassis with Abarth engines. From 2025, both the Mygale and Tatuus specifications competed simultaneously but in separate categories within shared race weekends — an arrangement distinct from series such as the United States Formula 4 and Ligier Junior Formula Championships, which run separate races for each specification.
The Australian Formula 4 Championship occupies a historically significant position as one of the first FIA-certified Formula 4 series in the Asia-Pacific region. Its troubled early years exposed the difficulty of sustaining a domestic junior formula category in a market where top Australian talent increasingly looked overseas for development opportunities. The series' revival, backed by an internationally experienced promoter and later returned to domestic hands, reflects renewed ambition to establish a viable local rung on the single-seater ladder at a time when Australian drivers such as Oscar Piastri and Jack Doohan have raised the country's Formula 1 profile significantly.