An unlikely formula

Formula India (Source: Motorauthority.com)

As far as I recall, my love for formula one started in a middle class living room in the small town of Nashik. It happened at an age when my brother had the size advantage on me and I had yet to learn to talk back to my Parents. So on most Sundays, I would easily get trumped, if there was anything else to be watched on television.

My brother especially found it particularly annoying the fact that all that ever saw in a formula one race was cars following each other like a train, repeatedly for over an hour. But I was already beginning to notice the sheer speed of proceedings, the decreasing time gaps between the drivers and the sheer persistence of driving 60 odd laps to a race victory. Somewhere, along I fell in the love the ferocity and the discipline of Michael Schumacher and ever since, I fought valiantly for my time with the TV on Sunday.

Growing up with like-minded friends, I quickly began to devour the technical details of the sport. I perused library and the dingy technical journals to read about Colin Chapman, formula-1 suspension geometry and head spinning facts of these high powered engines. I dreamed endlessly about what it would feel like to be a Driver or a mechanic in the garage, working on million dollar precision racing machines.

But not once, in my diminutive sense of entitlement, did I ever envision India having a Formula one team. I don’t recall a single conversation amongst my friends about this sport ever making it way to India in any which way or fashion. In fact I would have placed money on a bet (if I had any as a kid) that the most technologically advance form of motorsport would never lay a wheel on Indian grounds.

Yet, years later, on October 30th 2011 I stand humbled, corrected and romantically wide eyed. Today, I witnessed these magnificent machines race in front of the Indian people on a world class race track a few miles away from the capital of the country. I looked emotionally at the background scenes that lay littered with the Indian tricolors. The audience was dressed in Indian garb looking at most times amused. If it weren’t the obviousness of the asphalt I would have easily assumed that this was a cricket match.

The contrasting juxtaposition of hosting a Formula One race in India will be lost on most that haven’t lived in the country. A race car that costs over two million dollars to race at every event seems surreally out of place with 22% poverty rate. I am certain the laborer who bent at his knees paving asphalt or constructing the grandstand would not have clue what his efforts were going to result in. Many who attended the race represented a microscopic fraction of the Indian people that were decided purely by the richness of their incomes rather than their vibrant interest in Motorsport.

Yet, despite these strange happenings, I couldn’t but relish and smile heartily as I watched my first formula one race in India on the TV. The regularity of the proceedings, the lack of any special alterations or technical glitches stressed what a successful debut this was for Formula 1 in India. The tangibles from this could promote motorsport in India and perhaps provide the next F1 driver would finish first on the podium and treat 1 odd billion Indian people to their national anthem.

Sticklers would no doubt be dissatisfied. They would point out ignorance of dignitaries that couldn’t differentiate between the second place finisher Jenson Button and the third place finisher Fernando Alonso. They would scoff at the fact that a stray dog came about on the track on Friday practice. Or that the some of the dust was painted green to give the appearance of grass and how dusty this track was.

But their comments are already fizzled out by the unanimous positive responses from the drivers. Not only did they found the track to their liking, they were awed by the friendliness and the warmth of the Indian people. The result of which, I hope, is that the race becomes a permanent feature on the Formula One calendar.

I am convinced that one fateful October month in the future years; I would find myself decked in my Ferrari colors in the Grandstands. Waving the Indian colors with vigor and pomp.

Cementing the fact that something ‘unlikely’ for India, now almost never means ‘never’…