This Sunday will mark the beginning of Grand Prix racing in Formula 1 for this year, with the 2019 Australian Grand Prix. Sebastian Vettel is the two-time defending winner at the Australian Grand Prix and returns to Melbourne as the favorite; another win would give him four, tying him with Michael Schumacher for the most ever down under. Lewis Hamilton was the overall champion last year but has not won in Melbourne since 2015. His Ferrari rivals have looked solid during testing ahead of the season in Barcelona. We have your F1 betting odds for the drivers as well as information about the course and perspective about some of our top picks.

2019 Australian Grand Prix Odds & Betting Preview

Plenty of spins 🔄

A few close calls with the walls 😮 And a couple of very quick laps 🚀 It’s all the best bits from FP2 at the #AusGP 🇦🇺 pic.twitter.com/cC1r5WH2ho — Formula 1 (@F1) 15 de marzo de 2019

Driver Odds to Win the 2019 Australian Grand Prix

• Lewis Hamilton                                                                                                         6/4
• Sebastian Vettel                                                                                                        7/4
• Charles Leclerc                                                                                                         9/2
• Max Verstappen                                                                                                        13/2
• Valtteri Bottas                                                                                                           12/1
• Pierre Gasly                                                                                                               50/1
• Kimi Raikkonen                                                                                                         150/1
• Nico Hulkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo                                                                        200/1
• Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen, Daniil Kvyat                                              500/1
• Antonio Giovinazzi, Carlos Sainz, Alexander Albon, Sergio Perez,
• Lance Stroll                                                                                                               1000/1
• Lando Norris                                                                                                             2500/1
• George Russell, Robert Kubica                                                                              4000/1

The course is a street circuit around Albert Park Lake that stretches 3.3 miles (5.3 km) in length. The tightest turns are Turns 3 and 15, and the course has 16 turns overall. The drivers will complete 58 laps, and will use soft/supersoft/ultrasoft compounds. The existing record for one lap, 1:24.125, is held by Michael Schumacher, who set it with Ferrari back in 2004. This is an intriguing season in Formula 1 because of the advances that Ferrari has finally made. Mercedes has won the last five drivers’ and constructors’ titles despite Ferrari working to close the gap. One could argue that Sebastian Vettel gave away the title last year as much as Lewis Hamilton won it for Mercedes. Now that Charles Leclerc has taken Kimi Raikkonen’s spot at Ferrari, the Italian company has a chance to push harder for the constructors’ title — and Vettel has some real competition as the top driver for Ferrari. Leclerc drove with Sauber (now Alfa Romeo) as a rookie and drew rave reviews. He won the GP3 and GP2 circuit championships the first year he tried them, so the rivalry within Ferrari could be an interesting one. Also, Valtteri Bottas is talking about beating everyone in 2019. He had a shot at taking the lead early in 2018 but had some poor luck, and after the race in Azerbaijan, things got worse and worse for him, while Hamilton’s 2018 took off in a major way. Esteban Ocon is in waiting as the reserve driver, so if Bottas doesn’t start well in 2019, he could end up on the shelf. For Red Bull, the team switched to Honda power units instead of Renault. The units that Honda put in cars in 2018 were more reliable than they had been in years past, but it would be a stretch to say that they were foolproof. When they were turned up for extended periods of time, failure and overheating tended to occur, but if those problems have been fixed, Red Bull could also challenge Mercedes as well. Preseason tests went well, but we’ll see what the real pace looks like during qualifying and at the race. The middle of the pack has gotten tighter since 2018. Renault, Toro Rosso, Alfa Romeo, McLaren, Haas and Racing Point, have all gotten more competitive with one another, and even Williams has moved up from the bottom. There will be four rookie drivers at the Australian Grand Prix, and the course is an interesting one that provides tests the first time. I’m picking Vettel to get things going back in the right direction and make it three wins down under in a row — and to give Leclerc a bit of a lesson his first week with Ferrari.