THE REASON FOR AGP CROWD CAP

Australian Grand Prix CEO Andrew Westacott has spoken about the reasons behind the event having a crowd cap this year, as the event would have undoubtedly been set for record numbers this year.

Both Sunday and now Saturday tickets to the Australian Grand Prix have already sold out, the first time this has happened since the race moved to Victoria in 1996.

However, the event may not break the record attendance figure of 401,000 as it is capping the crowd this year, but why?

Westacott has said that is down to a shortage of labour, and in a bid to make it the best experience for everyone at the venue, they don’t want to spread the staff too thinly, hence the capping of crowd numbers.

“Let me cover off labour and the build in two perspectives,” Westacott said in a press conference attended by AUTO ACTION.

“One from an increase in the scope of grandstands, and an increase in scope of hospitality facilities is meant that we’ve actually spread the workforce out over a larger amount of time, or brought in more suppliers in the case of grandstands. We’ve gone from two suppliers to three suppliers to cater for the demand.

“When it comes to hospitality, one of the things in recent discussions with our three hospitality providers is that we’re okay at the moment.

“But as the numbers are going up, normally we’d have the recruitment of the workforce completed by now 16 to 20 days out.

“But what we’re finding now is the recruitment is going to go all the way up to the event.

“Now we’re confident that those numbers are going to be there, but if there is any desire or interest to work at the Australian Grand Prix.

“We’ll be putting details out there to make sure that people have that opportunity because we want to make sure, hence the reason why we’re capping the attendance at the 125-130,000 level with the experiences we’ve got, are going to be first-class.”

Westacott highlights that there are many great new eras to watch the action in 2022 with the addition of five new grandstands.

“The best example of that is either a hospitality facility, a grandstand or fantastic new general admission viewing hubs with about 41 Super screens around the venue,” he said.

“So we want to make sure the service deliveries are to the world-class standards expected of Formula 1 and expected by every Melbournian.”

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