Inevitably, Chase Carey, the CEO at the time of F1 owners Liberty Media, announced the cancellation of the event.
Other scheduled races were likewise cancelled as the pandemic spread and most countries went into lockdown.
It would not be until July that the first grand prix would be held in Austria, but remarkably, the FIA rearranged the schedule, amid strict security and Covid protocols, and held 17 races, albeit most of them in Europe.
For Australia, a planned return in November 2021 was scrapped as a second outbreak of Covid closed the Australian border.
Planning resumed and this weekend's event will now be the 25th race held in Melbourne. It has been extremely disappointing for the Australian Grand Prix Corporation [AGPC] to have to wait so long to host another grand prix, but the opportunity to carry out some changes to the track that utilises roads around the Albert Park lake was taken, aiming for a faster, more flowing circuit that will allow for more overtaking.
When the inaugural race in Melbourne was held in 1996, it seemed likely the long main straight would provide overtaking opportunities, but even with DRS that proved not to be the case.
That first race was memorable for being the debut grand prix for Jacques Villeneuve, who joined Williams as a teammate to Damon Hill, the latter trying to win the world championship after losing to Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 1995. Schumacher had moved from Benetton to Ferrari for the start of the 1996 season, and Williams was expected to have the best car. But Villeneuve, the Indy 500 winner, took pole position for his first race, signalling to Hill that if he wanted to be champion, he would have to beat his teammate.
The other memorable moment from that first race was a spectacular crash involving Martin Brundle in the Jordan. At Turn 3 his car somersaulted over the rear end of David Coulthard's McLaren, squeezed by Johnny Herbert in the Sauber. The Jordan did a horrific number of barrel rolls and split in two.
Miraculously, Brundle would crawl out of the wreckage, and after getting a lift back to the pits after the race was red-flagged, sprinted down pit lane to get into the spare car. In those days all teams used spare cars, but rising costs meant that after 2003 spare cars were banned.
Before rejoining the race, Brundle didn't have to convince the FIA doctor, the late Sid Watkins, that he was not injured, as he'd seen him sprint to his spare car. So he made the
restart, but another collision on lap two at the same corner brought his dramatic race to an end. Hill went on to win the race from Villeneuve after the latter had an oil leak and the team asked him to let Hill through in case the engine blew up. Hill would go on to win the world championship, with Villeneuve second.
In the reconfiguration of the track, Turn 1 will be 2.5m wider and Turn 3, widened by 4m, which could change the racing line. At Turn 6, a 7.5m widening could see the speed through that corner go from 149km/h to 219km/h. The biggest change is the removal of the chicane at Turns 9 and 10, meaning that area along Lakeside Drive will be the largest "straight" on the circuit, with speeds up to 330km/h, and it will also be one of four DRS zones.
Changes to Turns 11 and 12, with a camber adjustment, will provide more overtaking opportunities. Turn 13 has also been widened, with the kerbs bevelled to prevent driver overuse of them.
"Five seconds a lap quicker, but with the new-spec cars, closer racing," is the prediction of AGPC chief executive Andrew Westacott. The track has also been resurfaced for the first time since 1996.
Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo, who has had a rough start to 2022, contracting Covid and then finding his McLaren, along with that of teammate Lando Norris, is well off the pace, has welcomed the changes to his "home" circuit.
"These changes are in the direction of what we want," Ricciardo said. "Better races, more battles - the changes are going to push us towards that.
"I see all of these changes as beneficial for Sunday and we can have some fun on the brakes. It'll make racing closer, I'm pretty confident of that."
The new regulations have changed the order at the top and reshuffled the midfield. After two races, Ferrari leads both the Driver and Constructor championships. Charles Leclerc is the leading driver after a first and second, with his teammate Carlos Sainz, second, 12 points behind. World champion Max Verstappen - after a DNF in Bahrain but a victory in Saudi Arabia - is 20 points behind Leclerc. In the Constructor stakes, Ferrari is 40 and 41 points ahead respectively of Mercedes and Red Bull. That result flatters Mercedes, the defending Constructor champions, given the Red Bulls of Verstappen and Sergio Perez scored no points in Bahrain, while Mercedes finished third and fourth for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. The latter finished fifth in Saudi Arabia, while Hamilton, by his high standards, was a miserable 10th.
Mercedes will apparently bring a new rear wing to Melbourne to unlock the potential in the car, which has been bouncing at high speed, a phenomenon dubbed "porpoising."
"We assumed the bouncing would be less in Jeddah [Saudi Arabia] because the track is flatter," a Mercedes engineer reportedly told Auto Motor und Sport.
"We were wrong about that. We still don't fully understand what factors trigger the phenomenon. It's a constant learning process."
The Mercedes car is currently 11km/h behind Red Bull on the straights and 15 km/h slower than Ferrari in the corners.
Hamilton has admitted on social media to be "struggling mentally and emotionally", stating it is a "constant effort to keep going".
As the winner of 103 races and with seven drivers' titles, qualifying 16th as he did in Saudi Arabia, and finishing 10th, is not something Hamilton is used to. For the first time
since joining Mercedes in 2013, he no longer has the best car, albeit based on just two races.
Russell is both optimistic and realistic.
"It's two races, so we are definitely not out of it," he notes. "But for sure, if we don't manage to find some improvements there is no way we'll be in with a shot of fighting for this championship. But we've definitely not given up."
So does Russell expect an improvement in Melbourne?
"I think it will be very similar, to be honest," he said. "I don't see any reason why we will make any strides forward. We are definitely the third-fastest team at the moment ... closer to the fourth than to the second. So it will be more of the same in the coming races."
Last year's championship was a titanic battle between Mercedes and Red Bull, so how does Red Bull boss Christian Horner feel about the slow start with his team's two DNFs in Bahrain?
"It's still early in the season," he says. "Luck tends to even itself out over the course of the year so I think we've just got to go race by race. We are off the mark now, we are on the scoreboard, we have won our first race of the year, both drivers were again very competitive and we've just got to build some momentum."
And what about the even slower start by Mercedes?
"They are struggling. I have no feelings about their competitiveness," Horner remarked.
"Obviously I'm focused on our own competitiveness in what's a very intense fight with Ferrari at the moment. I have no doubt at some point Mercedes will join that battle, but my focus is very much on our team."
For the AGPC, its focus will be on the track changes they hope will ignite the first race at Albert Park for three years - without a similar incident to Brundle's in 1996 of course. What we do know is that the grandstands are a sellout, including five new stands built to accommodate over 100,000 racegoers.
The Melbourne Cup brings the city to a standstill on the first Tuesday in November and now it's F1 turn to bring back the crowds in a city that lived with a Covid lockdown longer than most cities in the world. That factor alone should prove a good excuse for a motorsport fan-fest and celebration.
Sources: F1.com, AGPC, Planet F1.
