Australian Grand Prix weather forecast

Posted on

| Written by

New cars, new rules – there are plenty of unknowns heading into the first race of 2009, but it looks like the weather won’t be one of them.

The Australian Grand Prix is expected to see three days of dry weather. Melbourne will experience temperatures in the low 20s (C) each day according to the Australian Government Bureau of Meterology.

Weather.com and Weather Underground agree with the forecast for a dry weekend with temperatures no more than 24C.

The weather in the state of Victoria has been in the news this year after a series of appalling bush fires claimed hundred of lives. The Australian Red Cross is still accepting donations to support communities affected by the disaster which you can send here: Australian Red Cross.

Thanks to Toby for the tip.

Read more

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

23 comments on “Australian Grand Prix weather forecast”

  1. Uh… You always know that the season is close when we start looking at weather forecasts.
    I’m not going to get any work done this week out of sheer anticipation.

  2. I farm in a part of Australia where the climate is very different from Melbourne, it’s dry and pretty predictable. Today we are forecast to have 30 degrees and that will probably be the case. The met office says chance of rain 5% which means none.

    What’s my point? I recently lived in Melbourne for a year and the saying in that area is “if you don’t like the weather in Melbourne, wait 10 minutes”

    However it will be interesting to see what the temperature will be at 5.00 PM and how this will affect the all important track temperature; check testing times to see which cars are struggling with tyre temperature generation.

    I’ll have a look for a more detailed daily temperature chart.

    1. Loads of detailed information there thanks for that link. Even got a satellite image too:

      http://www.weatherzone.com.au/satellite.jsp?lt=wzstate&lc=vic

    1. Terry Fabulous
      23rd March 2009, 0:05

      How good is the BOM site!

      This page updates the weather every ten minutes or so.
      The St Kilda station is right on Albert Park.

      The big issue for F1 this weekend is the sun.
      Every year, the last few laps of this race are very glary with a low sun right in the driver’s eyes. This year we are starting just when it will be at its worst!
      And of course if we have a red flag or delay of some sort we have sunset at 7;18pm, just 18 minutes after the 2 hour limit is reached.

      4 days to the cars, 6 days to the race!

  3. I think its going to be fairly dark by the end of the race. Hopefully it will be wet too, we need the rain. Its going to be a very interesting race

  4. I agree, i’m in ballarat 1 hr from melb, and have been watching the sunset everyday the few days that we have had cloud or drizzle over previous weeks means it gets dark quite early. i think it will need to be good weather or it might be just to dark to even see from inside the cockpit by 6 pm??. i would suggest the drivers don’t use tinied visors if its cloudy!! Can’t wait to be there heading to the circuit wednesday!!!!

  5. It would be nice if it rained for the first race of the season, but the Australian GP is usually interesting in the dry anyway. We usually get about 3 wet races per season, and if I could make a request to God for it to rain at certain races I’d probably choose 3 tracks which are usually boring in the dry- Catalunya, Nurburgring and Hungary perhaps. Or perhaps rain at Bahrain or Abu Dhabi for the novelty factor?

    And I’m no climate expert, but I know that Malaysia gets rain virtually every day of the year, and I think it usually occurs around tea time. Now that the Malaysian GP is being moved back to 5pm, what are the chances of another 2001 style downpour?

  6. yes weatherzone.com is a useful site. look at this radar:
    http://www.weatherzone.com.au/synoptic.jsp?d=6
    it shows that there is a chance of a shower on sunday!

  7. also dont forget to check out the weather watch from http://www.autosport.com

    weather watch link: http://live.autosport.com/commentary.php/id/70

  8. also surprisingly, http://www.metoffice.gov.uk have said that there will be fog on Saturday evening! link:

    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/australasia/melbourneforecast.html

    1. There won’t be fog. And a “shower” in Melbourne normally means it drizzles somewhere far to the east of the city. Only forecast “rain” will make any difference to the track. The overcast conditions that will probably be in effect will bring about some serious problems, I reckon. It’ll be nearly dark by 6pm if there’s no sun. No offense to European viewers, but this 5pm start is a stupid idea in my opinion.

      As an aside….Keith, did you see the Pitpass article on the bushfires? This morning it was announced that Christian Klien will run the BMW Sauber along the road between the fire-affected townships of Kinglake and Whittlesea. Apparently there’ll be a Minardi running too. My guess is the x2. Good to see F1 doing some good things for it’s reputation, for once.

  9. are there going to be any lights around the track for the drivers? it can get pretty dark approaching 7pm if the race is a long one

  10. are there going to be any lights around the track for the drivers? it can get pretty dark approaching 7pm if the race is a long one

    No there won’t be lights for the drivers as i understand certainly nothing like in Singapore.
    Only lights for patrons and fans.
    It is 6:55 pm here now and quite dark the race really needed to be a couple of weeks ago to avoid the light problem. Does anyone know why it is later this year??

  11. So that the British can watch it start at 7am, instead of midnight or whatever it was last year :)

    GO Kubica!

  12. toby i totally agree

    GO KUBICA!!!

  13. Sorry guys i dont agree there! GO KIMI!!!!

    FORZA FERRARI!!

  14. The weatherman now says that Sunday is going to be a perfect day, sunny 24c.
    I thought it may get fairly dark by the time the race finishes, but have just found out its daylight saving here this weekend, so bring on the racing :)

  15. A useful guide thanks. I predict I’m going to quickly get bored of BBC intros to the season and that extra hour in bed could make all the difference. This year I’m not going to sleep through the whole race and wake up just in time to see the results.

    I noticed a minor time translation error for Free practice 2. 05:30 – 19:30 should be 05:30 – 07:30. Not of Tag-Heuer Brazil 2003 proportions, but worth mentioning I thought ;)

  16. i suppose im glad its going to be sunny, because on the first race you want to see whos best

Comments are closed.