The competition began as the 100 Miles Road Race at Phillip Island in 1928, won by Arthur Waite in an Austin 7. It was officially named the Australian Grand Prix in 1929. The race moved to Mount Panorama in 1938, where Peter Whitehead won, before the event was interrupted by World War II.
In the post-war years the race rotated between venues across Australian states. Jack Brabham won at the event driving a Cooper T40, the first rear-engine car to take victory at the Australian Grand Prix. The Tasman Series era from 1963 to 1969 attracted international stars including Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart.
The Australian Grand Prix joined the Formula One World Championship in 1985, held at the Adelaide Street Circuit. The Adelaide years produced a series of memorable races, including the 1986 title decider and the rain-shortened 1991 race. The event hosted eleven Formula One World Championship rounds in Adelaide before relocating to Melbourne.
The race moved to the Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne in 1996, a semi-permanent 5.278 km street circuit built around Albert Park lake. Damon Hill won the inaugural Melbourne edition. The Melbourne race became the traditional season-opening round for much of the period that followed.
Michael Schumacher won four Australian Grands Prix at the Melbourne venue, a record he shared with Lex Davison from the Adelaide era. The event at Albert Park consistently draws large crowds and is widely regarded as one of the most prominent rounds on the Formula One calendar.
The 2023 edition was held on 2 April at the Albert Park Circuit over 58 laps. Max Verstappen won from pole position ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. The race was exceptionally disrupted, producing three red flags during the event — a record number — caused by crashes involving Alexander Albon, Kevin Magnussen, and a mass incident at the final restart that eliminated the two Alpine cars of Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. The final restart was conducted on the last lap itself, with Verstappen taking the chequered flag. The 2023 event set an all-time Melbourne Grand Prix attendance record of 444,631 across the weekend, making it the most attended Melbourne sporting event in history. After the race, spectators breached the circuit perimeter and entered the track before racing had fully concluded, resulting in a fourth red flag being shown after the chequered flag and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation being found in breach of FIA sporting code.
The 2024 edition was held on 24 March and set a new circuit attendance record of 452,055 for the weekend, the first time the event sold out entirely in its history. Carlos Sainz Jr. won the race for Ferrari after starting from second position, just two weeks after undergoing an appendectomy that had forced him to miss the previous round in Saudi Arabia. Pole-sitter Max Verstappen retired on lap four, ending a streak of nine consecutive victories. Sainz's teammate Charles Leclerc finished second, completing Ferrari's first one-two finish since the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix. Lando Norris finished third. Leclerc set the Albert Park lap record of 1:19.813 during the race. The 2024 event was the 87th running of the Australian Grand Prix and the 29th held at Albert Park.
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