Nearly two weeks ago, Formula 1 racing marked the thirtieth anniversary of one of its most traumatic weekends. At the San Marino Grand Prix held at the Imola circuit on 1 May 1994, Brazilian driver and three-time Formula 1 World Champion Ayrton Senna went barrelling off the Tamburello corner when his steering column failed, crashing into the wall and subsequently dying. This had followed the death of Austrian driver Roland Ratzenburger the previous day during practice.
Jules Bianchi’s 2014 accident at Japan’s Suzuka circuit aside, Formula 1 has become incredibly safe. It has also become incredibly popular with viewership numbers setting records thanks in no small part to the success of the Netflix series Drive To Survive, now in its sixth season.
The commercial success of the sport, which was acquired by American private equity firm Liberty Media for $4.6 billion in 2017, has led new teams lining up to join and more and more countries wanting a slice of the pie by hosting races. In the past three years alone, new races have been added in Jeddah, Miami, Las Vegas and Qatar. This year, the Formula 1 circus returned to Shanghai for the first time after the pandemic. In 1994, when Senna died, there were just 16 races on the calendar. This year there are going to be 24. And more countries such as Vietnam want in and others like Malaysia, South Korea and Turkey, which previously hosted races, want them back.
Another country that wants a race back is our own.
In January the Sports Authority of Gujarat (SAG) put out a tender for a design concept for a partially dismountable race circuit capable of hosting F1 races at the Gujarat International Finance Tec City (GIFT City). This would be a similar concept to the current Singapore Grand Prix where the garages, paddock and start-finish straight is permanent but the rest of the circuit uses the city-states public roads and the track is put together in the week leading up to the race. Since then, The Economic Times has reported that a consortium headed by German racetrack designer Hermann Tilke has scored the most points in an evaluation by SAG and could be given a contract. The total works could cost Rs 10,000 crore.
I think that it will be a colossal waste of money.
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The money question
Don’t get me wrong, I love Formula 1, one of my first memories of watching the sport on television was seeing Ayrton Senna’s death live on Star Sports during the early days of cable TV. I support McLaren Racing, and I have for years and was gutted to miss Lando Norris’ win at Miami last weekend (the race started at 1.30am on a school night, and I can’t stay up that late anymore).
I would love to see Formula 1 come back to India, but to invest huge sums of money on a new circuit when one Formula 1 grade racetrack in Greater Noida lies underutilised is insane. And this does not even go into the commercial aspects of the race. The major reason the original Grand Prix failed in India was not just a total lack of Central Government support at the time, even though UP Chief Minister Mayawati backed it with providing cheap land to Jaypee Infrastructure, the race could never make back its license fee and hosting costs from ticket sales and other sponsors.
You see, racetrack owners have to pay huge sums of money to Liberty Media for the rights to host a race. The only stream of revenue for a race operator is ticket and concession sales for the race weekend and allied events such as music concerts. The Miami Grand Prix was very profitable, but then again race-goers in the expensive seats were paying $180 for a plate of nachos and $450 for a bottle of Jack Daniels. I don’t know about you, but Rs15,000 for some nachos and forty grand for low-drawer American whiskey, is a bit much. The United States races, there are three of them now, use the nation’s consumption spending to make money. The European races have a million fans walking in over the entire weekend and they make money.
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Finding sustainability
Newer races find it difficult to make money. No matter how good the racing is, Malaysia’s Sepang circuit had brilliant racing but they could not sustain it. Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have thrown a whole lot of oil and gas money at the races, which are used as marketing exercises for those nations, but if the money rug is pulled, the races would likely collapse overnight.
And therein lies the rub, even if GIFT City spends out of their own pocket, how long would the race survive? Eventually, every business, and racing is a business, has to be sustainable. If there was an extremely talented Indian driver at the sharp-end, maybe a race could attract the hundreds of thousands of fans needed for sustainability. But while Arjun and Kush Maini, Jehan Daruvala and Arman Ebrahim are good drivers, some taking part in Formula 2 — the racing series below Formula 1 — as of right now there is no realistic pathway for Indian talent at the top-tier of racing. Maybe one day there will be, but that day isn’t today or any day for the foreseeable future.
And if these two reasons were not concerning enough, let alone the massive construction bill, there is also the fact that the Formula 1 calendar is jam-packed already. In a recent F1: Beyond The Grid podcast, Chief Executive of McLaren Racing, Zak Brown explicitly stated that more races can’t be added to the calendar as the teams are far too stretched already.
Yes, India is the world’s third-largest car market and a fast-growing economy with more consumption. Maybe Formula 1 should come back to India, but I genuinely do not think the time is now. And even if it does, I honestly do not believe that spending more than a billion dollars building a new circuit is even a remotely good idea.
@kushanmitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)