The Australian GP has been off the F1 calendar the last two years due to Covid-19 but the demand for tickets have increased.

In an interview with the website Speedcafe.com, Andrew Westacott, Australian GP CEO, talked about what is bringing more interest into the sport:

“We’re finding so many people have been attracted to the sport because of the ferocious competition this year between Red Bull and Mercedes, or the attraction that is now being ignited as a result of Netflix.”

“We’ve been really, really pleased with the initial uptake of tickets, particularly grandstand tickets, and that’s leading the pack, closely followed by hospitality and then general admission – of course, we don’t have as much scarcity on general admission because of the huge venue.”

Since 2020 the circuit has received modifications at multiple turns and widening the pit lane, all of this is expected to reduce the lap times by a number of seconds.

“To give you some comparison, when we were talking this time last year, and earlier, we were producing smaller grandstands of 50 and 75 percent occupancy levels, spread out, reduced number of rows that were very, very controllable and manageable.”

“Now we’re going back to the same build that we’ve had, from a configuration point of view, in previous years, but we’re making the capacity of those grandstands, as a result of the initial demand, we’ve got to make them bigger.”

“I think probably indications are 20 to 30 percent bigger than what we were having in 2019 and 2020.”

“So the demand that we’ve seen already, just after about a week of pre-release and early release, has been such that our guys and our engineering team are looking to increase the grandstand capacity.”

He also talked about new attractions and activities to the track:

“One particular area of the music was going to be promoting emerging talent with new bands, new individuals, new artists.”

“Then there will be another category of the music that probably has more homegrown talents and household names.”

“We are planning on every one of the attractions that we had plus more for 2022.”

“So there will be a Melbourne walk; if you’re a purchaser of Formula 1 Paddock Club hospitality there will be pit lane walks.”

For most of the 21st century, the Australian GP has been the season opener but the current world situation and travel restrictions have forced changes to the calendar, moving the GP to April.