The Australian Grand Prix is known as the Formula 1 ‘festival in the park,’ Auld says. Here’s how he is growing further attendance and engagement at Melbourne’s blockbuster motorsport festival.
The countdown is on until Sunday’s 2025 Formula 1 season kick-off in Melbourne.
It will be Lewis Hamilton’s first race with new team Ferrari, Australian Jack Doohan’s debut on the grid for Alpine, and a homecoming for Melbourne’s own Oscar Piastri, who will once again be behind the wheel with 2024 Constructors Champion McLaren, and has just signed on with the Kiwi-founded, England-headquartered team until 2028.
It’s also the first year Louis Vuitton’s decade-long partnership with Formula 1 comes into play, after the brand announced its title sponsorship of the Australian Grand Prix in January.
A record 452,000 people attended the four-day Australian race event last year, and Grand Prix Australia CEO Travis Auld says he is looking to build patronage and participation further in 2025.
“There’s extraordinary demand around F1 globally, but we’re particularly seeing it in Melbourne,” Auld tells Forbes Australia in an exclusive interview. “We had 151,000 people [in one day last year] which is a record on top of a previous year’s record. There’s now opportunity to further grow the event.”
The key to expanding Australian F1 is appealing to a wider audience, the CEO says.
“The demographic and demand is changing every year. Forty-four per cent of our attendees last year were female. Attendees are a lot younger, there are a lot more families. We’ve seen incredible growth off the back of Covid.”
Auld stepped into the Australia Grand Prix Corporation role in 2023 after almost a decade as CFO of the Australian Football League (AFL).
“Melbourne really leans into big events and we’re an example of that,” he says. “We’re trying to evolve the offering. We’re a big street race in a park, right on the doorstep of the city, and that’s fantastic. It gives us opportunity to do a lot of things.”
The Victorian-born executive has led a reorganisation of the Albert Park track into different ‘precincts.’
“We felt coming out of last year’s event, there was the opportunity to improve the experience for fans by better organising the park into really clear, distinct precincts with their own narrative and offering. We have Lakeside, and Pitstops Park, which is set up for families, and Melbourne Junction,” says Auld.
The Melbourne Junction precinct is general admission, and highlights some of Melbourne’s best food. This year features pop-ups from Moveda, the Espy, and Daniel Ricciardo’s Wine Bar.
The traditional F1 attendee – a motorsport enthusiast – will also experience the event differently.
“We now have motorsport straight, which is where the supercar and Porsche Carrera Cup garages are, it’s where we have a podium for some of our races,” says Auld. “It will mean that it’s much clearer, depending which demographic you come from, as to where you’re going to have the best experience.”
Melbourne-based fans and visitors who can’t make it to the track can now participate too.
“We have launched, for the first time, a free F1 Fan Festival in the city. So if you can’t get to Albert Park, it doesn’t mean you will miss out on the vibe of the weekend,” says Auld.
“We have a big screen broadcasting all the on-track and off-track activity over the entire weekend, from Wednesday through Sunday. Oscar Piastri will be on stage, we’ll have Jack Doohan on stage, and fans can actually see their drivers up close.”
Now in his third year with McLaren, Piastri remains a a big drawcard for fans, as is Jack Doohan who recently took a seat as a main driver with French team Alpine. Having two Australian-born F1 drivers racing this year is undoubtedly a driver of demand, Auld says.
“We’ve got two drivers on the grid, after Jack Doohan and the famous Doohan name stepped in last year. And we had Daniel Ricciardo before that so we’re very fortunate in that way,” says Auld.
The other enormous driver in awareness and popularity of Formula 1, has been the Netflix series Drive to Survive, which premiered its 7th season this week.
“Drive to Survive played a big role in the surge of popularity of F1 around the world,” says Auld, who adds that is good for the sport and good for Melbourne.
“Every race has its own personality, as it should. They’re all very successful in their own way – some are purely just about the race and there are no real activations off track. We are known for a festival in the park. It’s also the things we do off track that define us,” says Auld.
“We want to bring the best of Melbourne into Albert Park, and take the best of Albert Park into Melbourne.”
