In December 1956 over 100,000 people descended upon Albert Park to watch the Australian Grand Prix, a non-championship race for Formula 1 Grand Prix cars, and the Moomba Trophy, a sports car race, which took place around the lake, which will witness the second round of the 2010 Formula 1 season this coming weekend. One of the twenty two drivers taking part was Stirling, racing a Maserarti 250F that he campaigned throughout the 1956 season. The March 2010 Race History feature covers the 1956 race, complemented by never before published images that have been made available to the website by Alex Hastie, a life long Australian motorsport enthusiast. 

The 1956 Australian Grand Prix was held to coincide with the Moomba festival, a "just for the hell of it" Melbourne festival that continues to the present day (and still leaves most Melbournians a little mystified about what it is that they're actually supposed to be celebrating). But it was the 1956 Australian Grand Prix that came closest of all the pre-championship Grand Prix to matching the scale and spectacle that saw the current World Drivers Champion, Jenson Button, thrust the Brawn F1 team into the Formula 1 limelight back in March 2009.

The 1956 race was arranged in conjunction with Melbourne's role as host city to that year's Olympic Games. With few exceptions, previous Australian Grands Prix had featured predominantly Australian drivers, and only the 1953 event had ever been held so close to a major city. Earlier in the year, several of the top local drivers had taken delivery of some impressive new machinery from Europe, so race goers could look forward to the prospect of enjoying their picnics in the company of an assortment of Ferraris and Maserati 250Fs. The real coup, though, was the announcement that Stirling and Jean Behra would be travelling to Melbourne to compete in the event against locals names such as Reg Hunt and Stan Jones. It was Stan's son Alan Jones who went onto win the Formula 1 World Championship for Williams 24 years later.

The spectacle of Stirling hurling his Maserati 250F around the lake would ensure that the crowd would be treated to something never seen in Australia before. Like the Formula 1 Grand Prix that would return to the park in the mid-1990s, the 1956 race was one that people would travel vast distances to experience as something more than a mere date on the sporting calendar. This was also Stirling's first trip to Australia after a long trans-Pacific flight to Sydney followed by a four hour hop to Melbourne in an elderly Dakota. For the duration of his stay in Melbourne, Stirling was loaned a Humber Snipe, not a car you can easily donut, to get around the city in, a city which in his words, he would "come to know and like very much over the years".

The show was no doubt assisted by the Olympics, which created a festive atmosphere throughout the city, and perhaps made the disruptions brought about by the race a little more bearable for the local residents. In truth, the 1956 Grand Prix probably needed to be something special, because not only was it running concurrently with the Olympics, but to a certain degree it was also competing with it. No records exist to differentiate between visitors that arrived in Melbourne for the Grand Prix and those that were in the city for the Olympics, and no doubt a lot of Olympic visitors took advantage of the race's timing to attend both events - particularly with the promise of such famous names in the starting field.

The 1956 race enjoyed substantial coverage in the newspapers, despite the presence of the Olympics. As an event, it complemented the party atmosphere of the Olympic Games perfectly. Brass bands entertained the massive crowd, which various estimates placed somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people. Children entered competitions to win rides around the circuit with Stirling, which seems fitting given that a live version of the Roary the Racing Car TV Show, which Stirling narrates both here in the UK and in Australia, will once again entertain children at the 2010 Australian Grand Prix, with the addition of Conrod, a character based on a V8 race car voiced by Craig Lowndes.

Needless to say that Stirling started from pole, set the fastest lap over the 3.13 mile circuit at 100.26 mph and went onto win the 1956 Australian Grand Prix from his Maserati team mate Jean Behra. Stirling also took the victory flag in the sports car race, racing a Maserati 300S, which had been run the week end before on the same circuit. Re-live the 1956 Australian Grand Prix through images above and in the Photo section of the website.

Our thanks to Alex Hastie and his representative Scott Gordon for use the images, which can also be purchased signed and unsigned by clicking here.

From learning to drive in his early teens on the North coast of New South Wales, Australia during WWII, Alex Hastie quickly developed a life-long interest in the automobile. His passion soon extended to becoming an avid motor racing enthusiast attending many events during the 1940's and 1950's including Mount Druitt, Albert Park, Bathurst and the Redex Trials amongst others. Alex's other interest was still photography, which provided him with the opportunity to capture images of the day including some youthful shots of Stirling that come from his prized collection. 

Note that all images of the 1956 Australian GP shown in the News and Photo sections of the website are the copywrite of Alex Hastie, no copying or reproduction in any format without the express permission of the copywrite holder.