Australian GP build-up: F1's best Aussies

With the opening round of the new F1 season, fast approaching, we look at the best drivers from the hosts of the first race: Australia.

Ricciardo is the only current Aussie competing in F1, and is widely considered as one of the most talented. Ricciardo started his career with half a season with backmarkers HRT in 2011, before spending two years with Toro Rosso.

A promotion to Red Bull followed, and Ricciardo impressed as he outperformed and outscored four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel.

Ricciardo has won five races as of the end of the 2017 season and is looking for his first world title.

Webber was a much-loved figure in F1, and considered one of the unluckiest drivers in recent times

He was in pole position to win the 2010 world title, but a crash in Korea and strategy error in Abu Dhabi allowed team mate Sebastian Vettel to take the title.

It took Webber seven years to win his first race in Formula One, and he won 9 races overall.

Towards the end of his career he had a strained relationship with the Red Bull team and Vettel, believing that the team treated him unfairly.

Jones is the most recent Australian F1 World Champion, in 1980 when he was driving for Williams, winning five races that season.

Jones began his F1 career at the back of the field with four teams that could not support a championship challenge.

It was when he moved to Williams his talents truly showed, winning four races in a scintillating end to the 1979 season.

Early season unreliability cost him the title that year, but he was back in 1980, taking the championship ahead of team-mate Nelson Piquet.

Jones made two unsuccessful returns to Formula One, retiring in 75% of the races he entered in that time.

Brabham is the most successful Australian driver of all time, winning three world titles in 1959, 1960 and 1966.

He won his first two titles with Cooper before deciding to build his own team.

Brabham is still the only driver to win the world title driving for a team he owned.

The Brabham name lived on in F1 until 1992, and some stars of F1 raced under the Brabham team, such as Niki Lauda, Jochen Rindt, Graham Hill, Nelson Piquet and Damon Hill.

Jack Brabham passed away in 2014, aged 88, but his legacy still lives on in Formula One and Australian sporting folklore.