Australian Grand Prix around the streets surrounding the Albert Park Lake in inner Melbourne. That circuit, which for four brief years gave Australia the strongest taste of the grandeur surrounding European Grand Prix racing, was 40 years later very much modified, used to host the 1996 Australian Grand Prix as the modern Formula One world championship venue. Jack Brabham took his first of three AGP wins in 1955 at the short Port Wakefield Circuit in South Australia. The race is significant in that Brabham was driving a Bristol powered Cooper T40, the first ever rear-engine car to win the Grand Prix. The Grand
1970 Formula One season crowned champion. The 1970 season was one of the most tragic in Formula One history. Before Rindt's death at Monza, New Zealander Bruce McLaren was killed testing a McLaren Can-Am car at the Goodwood Circuit in England, and Briton Piers Courage was killed at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, driving a Frank Williams-entered De Tomaso. 1970 saw the introduction of slick tyres by Goodyear. After a Formula One career which began at the 1955 British Grand Prix, triple World Champion Jack Brabham retired at the end of the year. The first round was the South Africa Grand Prix held