©Williams/LAT
Adelaide
The City of the Churches hosted the Aussie Grand Prix for eleven years from 1985 and it was without a doubt the most popular event on the calendar, not least because it was the final round, so that loads of F1 folk stayed on in Oz for a nice summer holiday to round off the year. A much smaller city than Melbourne, the whole of Adelaide would be taken over by F1 fever and anyone connected with the event was treated like royalty in the restaurants, clubs and bars. The organisers pioneered the idea of not letting a minute go by without some sort of track action from Thursday to Sunday, creating a fantastic week–long buzz. Indeed, until we went to Indy, the last race held here drew the biggest ever F1 crowd of 210,000. Adelaide saw plenty of drama, including Nigel Mansell losing the title in ’86 when a tyre blew and Mika Hakkinen’s terrible 1995 crash that almost claimed his life. And what about the 1989 wet race and that amazing onboard footage from Brundle’s Brabham, when Senna’s McLaren appeared out of the murk like the shark in Jaws to pile into the back of the Englishman. Two years later, the race was stopped because of rain after just 14 laps, so we had to start the end of season party early. It was here that Senna took his last ever GP win in 1993 before joining Tina Turner up on stage at the post-race concert. Inevitably and poignantly considering what would happen a few months later, she sang “Simply The Best” in his honour.
