F1 Australian GP can't have record race day crowd due to staff shortages

Ticket sales have been high for the first full Australian Grand Prix since 2019 with both Saturday and Sunday now fully sold out.

Thursday and Friday have also been filling fast as fans look to welcome Formula 1 back to Melbourne and see a revised Albert Park circuit for the first time.

But despite the rush on tickets, the Australian Grand Prix Corporation says a record race day crowd won't be happening.

While an aggregate record across the four days is feasible, the race day benchmark of 154,000 for the first Melbourne race in 1996 won't be achievable.

That's because of a capacity limit of around 130,000 that's been self-enforced by the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) to ensure the quality of the event isn't compromised by labour shortages being felt around the country.

“We expect that we’re going to have one of the biggest aggregate crowds in the history of the event,” said AGPC CEO Andrew Westacott.

“We won’t surpass the opening round numbers in 1996 of 154,000, but we expect to have about the second or third highest attendance on a Sunday, possibly the highest attendance on a Saturday and a Friday.

“Maybe that also moves into Thursday as well as we move closer to the event.”

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes AMG F1 W10

Photo by: Jerry Andre / Motorsport Images

Westacott added that the labour shortages were clear to see in the recruitment of event staff, which would normally already be complete, but this year will continue until the eve of the grand prix weekend.

“One of the things, in recent discussions with our three hospitality providers, is that we’re okay at the moment [in terms of staff numbers],” Westacott explained.

“But as the numbers are going up, normally we’d have the recruitment of the workforce completed