Race Start
Saturday, March 7 at 11:00 PM EST
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Free .ics download — sessions appear in your local time in Google, Apple & Outlook calendars.
Round 1 of 22 · Albert Park Circuit · March 6–8, 2026
Free .ics download — sessions appear in your local time in Google, Apple & Outlook calendars.
| Session | Eastern | Central | Mountain | Pacific |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Practice 1 | Thu, Mar 5, 8:30 PM EST | Thu, Mar 5, 7:30 PM CST | Thu, Mar 5, 6:30 PM MST | Thu, Mar 5, 5:30 PM PST |
| Practice 2 | Fri, Mar 6, 12:00 AM EST | Thu, Mar 5, 11:00 PM CST | Thu, Mar 5, 10:00 PM MST | Thu, Mar 5, 9:00 PM PST |
| Practice 3 | Fri, Mar 6, 8:30 PM EST | Fri, Mar 6, 7:30 PM CST | Fri, Mar 6, 6:30 PM MST | Fri, Mar 6, 5:30 PM PST |
| Qualifying | Sat, Mar 7, 12:00 AM EST | Fri, Mar 6, 11:00 PM CST | Fri, Mar 6, 10:00 PM MST | Fri, Mar 6, 9:00 PM PST |
| Race | Sat, Mar 7, 11:00 PM EST | Sat, Mar 7, 10:00 PM CST | Sat, Mar 7, 9:00 PM MST | Sat, Mar 7, 8:00 PM PST |
The 2026 season opens where modern F1 traditions begin: Albert Park in Melbourne. The semi-permanent parkland circuit winds around a lake and rewards confidence over its fast, flowing middle sector. As the first race of the all-new 2026 regulations era, this is the weekend the entire grid finds out who got the new cars right — expect the form book to be rewritten in a single afternoon.
Albert Park is a semi-permanent layout: for most of the year these are ordinary public roads around a lake in a Melbourne park, which is why the surface starts the weekend slippery and improves dramatically as rubber goes down. Lap times can tumble by two or three seconds between Friday practice and Sunday, so early-weekend form here is famously misleading. The 2022 resurfacing and layout revisions removed the old chicane at the far end of the lake, turning that section into a flat-out sweep and making Albert Park significantly faster than it was for its first 25 years.
The lap rewards a car that changes direction well: the middle sector strings together quick left-right transitions where the walls are close enough to punish greed. The best overtaking chances come into Turn 1, Turn 3, and the fast Turn 9-10 chicane, with four DRS-assisted straights giving chasing cars a genuine shot. Melbourne's autumn weather is changeable, and a safety car appears in the majority of races here — the park's grass and gravel runoff means small mistakes often end in recovery vehicles rather than rejoins.
Melbourne took over the Australian Grand Prix from Adelaide in 1996 and has been F1's traditional season opener for most of the years since. Albert Park's roll call of winners reads like a history of the modern sport — Schumacher, Hakkinen, Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel — and the circuit has a habit of chaotic openers: multiple first-lap pileups, surprise podiums, and the occasional shock result as teams discover in racing conditions what winter testing hid.
Melbourne is brutal for US fans: the race goes green on Saturday night/Sunday very early morning in American time zones. Set an alarm or record it — season openers are the one race you don't want spoiled before breakfast. The good news: it's a one-time sacrifice, as most of the season runs at far friendlier hours.
If you can't stay up, the practical play is to record the race and watch over Sunday breakfast — just put your phone in another room, because a season opener result is the hardest spoiler of the year to dodge. Full session times for every US time zone are in the table above, and our guide to why F1 start times swing so wildly across the season explains when the calendar turns friendly again.
The race starts Saturday, March 7 at 11:00 PM EST. That's 10:00 PM CST Central, 9:00 PM MST Mountain, and 8:00 PM PST Pacific.
No, it uses the standard format: three practice sessions, qualifying (Saturday, March 7 at 12:00 AM EST), and the Grand Prix.
58 laps of the 5.278 km Albert Park Circuit, a race distance of about 306 km.
Melbourne is 14-16 hours ahead of US time zones depending on daylight saving, so a 3:00 PM Sunday race start in Australia lands on Saturday night or very early Sunday morning across the United States. It's one of only a handful of 2026 races with overnight US timing.
New to Formula 1 or planning your viewing weekend? Read our guides to watching F1 in the US, how a race weekend works, and why F1 start times vary.