00:00On the 24th of May, 2025, in Monaco, a 24-year-old from Bengaluru stood on the Formula 2 podium
00:08while the Indian National Anthem played over the streets of Monte Carlo.
00:13His name is Kush Maini.
00:15He was the first Indian driver ever to win a Formula 2 race at Monaco.
00:21It was a historic moment for Indian motorsport.
00:24And the country that was cheering for him has no Formula 1 race of its own.
00:30India has 78.8 million Formula 1 fans, more than the entire population of France.
00:40The sports fan base here grew by 41% in three years, faster than any comparable major market in the
00:47world.
00:48And yet, the last time a Formula 1 car raced on Indian soil was October 2013, over a decade ago.
00:59The fans didn't leave.
01:01The race did.
01:03This is that story.
01:05India's relationship with Formula 1 did not build slowly.
01:10It arrived.
01:11The sport went from a niche interest, known mainly to diaspora and cable television viewers,
01:17to a property with nearly 80 million domestic fans.
01:22And that shift happened while India still had no race on the calendar.
01:26When FanCode first acquired Formula 1's exclusive broadcast rights in India in 2024,
01:33the fan base was under 60 million.
01:35By the time the deal was extended through 2028, confirmed in December 2025,
01:42that number had climbed to 79 million.
01:46The platform doubled its total user base to 200 million in the same period,
01:53largely on the back of F1.
01:55Formula 1 added Tamil commentary, Hindi commentary,
01:59a motorsport podcast, fan screenings in cities across the country,
02:03the infrastructure of a fan base was being built,
02:07just without the one thing that would complete it.
02:10To understand what India is building toward,
02:13you have to understand what India once had,
02:16and how it lost it.
02:18The Bhudd International Circuit was built outside New Delhi,
02:21at a cost of approximately 400 million dollars.
02:25It opened in 2011.
02:27Three Formula 1 Grand Prix were held there,
02:30in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
02:34All three were won by Sebastian Vettel.
02:37The crowds were large.
02:38The racing was competitive.
02:40The appetite was real.
02:43India had a Grand Prix,
02:45and the country showed up for it.
02:47India had a team in Formula 1.
02:50Force India, owned by Indian businessman Vijay Mallya,
02:54competed in the sport from 2008 to 2018.
02:57They finished 4th in the Constructors' Championship in both 2016 and 2017.
03:04They scored 6 podiums in 203 races.
03:08For a decade, there was an Indian name on the grid.
03:12And then, in the space of a few years,
03:16both were gone.
03:18Force India entered administration in 2018,
03:21a casualty of its owner's financial collapse,
03:24and was eventually rebuilt as what is now Aston Martin.
03:28And the Indian Grand Prix was gone before that,
03:31killed not by lack of audience,
03:34but by a tax classification.
03:37The Uttar Pradesh government classified Formula 1 as
03:40entertainment, not sport.
03:42That single decision triggered a 25% entertainment tax,
03:47plus customs duties on teams' freight.
03:49The promoter went to court.
03:52The court backed the government.
03:54The losses were written off at more than $25 million.
03:58The race was promised back for 2015.
04:02Then 2016.
04:04It never came.
04:06The circuit sat silent.
04:20What happened next is the more interesting part of the story.
04:24The fans didn't leave.
04:26India has produced a line of drivers that never stopped moving.
04:30Naren Kartikeyan became the first Indian to race in Formula 1 in 2005.
04:36Karun Chandhok followed in 2010.
04:39Together, they made 59 Grand Prix starts across eight seasons,
04:43without a competitive car,
04:45without a home race,
04:47without the infrastructure that most Formula 1 nations take for granted.
04:51Then Jahan Daruvala, Mumbai-born, Force India Academy graduate,
04:56spent four seasons in Formula 2,
04:58became the first Indian to win an F2 race in Bahrain in 2020,
05:03and was widely regarded as the most credible Indian F1 prospect of his generation.
05:09The door never quite opened.
05:11By 2025, he had stepped back from racing entirely.
05:15And then, Kush Maney.
05:17In March 2025, Alpine named the 24-year-old from Bengaluru as their test and reserve driver.
05:25Only the third Indian officially linked to a Formula 1 team.
05:29Two months later, in Monaco, he won.
05:33When the Indian National Anthem played at Monte Carlo on the 24th of May, 2025,
05:39it was playing for a 20-year line of Indian drivers
05:42who had kept going in a sport that had no race to offer them at home.
05:47Maney was the moment they had all been building toward.
05:51The broadcast infrastructure matched the driver's story.
05:55Fancode's deal brought Hindi and Tamil commentary into living rooms
05:59that had previously watched Formula 1 in English or not at all.
06:04Fan communities grew online.
06:07Screenings sold out.
06:09The ecosystem built itself from the demand side,
06:12which is, in any sport, how it is supposed to happen.
06:16By the end of 2025, India had the fan base.
06:20It had the drivers.
06:21It had the broadcast deal.
06:24The only thing missing,
06:26the only thing that had been missing for 12 years,
06:29was the race.
06:31The gap between India's fan base and India's calendar presence
06:35became impossible to ignore in 2024.
06:39Travel booking platform Skyscanner recorded a 189% spike in flight bookings
06:46from Indian cities to Singapore for the September 2024 Grand Prix weekend,
06:51then a 188% spike to Abu Dhabi for the December season finale.
06:57Indian fans were flying to someone else's race
07:01because there was no race of their own to attend.
07:04That is not a niche fan base behaving niche.
07:07That is nearly 80 million people,
07:10millions of whom were booking international flights
07:13to watch cars go around a circuit in another country,
07:16telling the sport exactly what it means to them.
07:19Then, in March 2026,
07:24Formula One arrived in India anyway.
07:27Not for a race,
07:28for a show run.
07:30The driver was Arvid Lindblad,
07:3318 years old,
07:34the sole rookie on the 2026 Formula One grid.
07:38Born in Surrey, England.
07:40Swedish father.
07:41Indian mother.
07:43Her parents from Punjab.
07:45Three flags on his helmet.
07:47British,
07:48Swedish,
07:48Indian.
07:50Qualifying 9th on his debut at the Australian Grand Prix.
07:54Before the show run,
07:56Lindblad said,
07:57It's going to be amazing driving an F1 car on the streets of Delhi.
08:02It will be even more special for me
08:04because it's going to be my first show run as a Formula One driver
08:08and doing that in India,
08:10with my heritage and background,
08:12is obviously something I'm very excited about.
08:15An Indian heritage driver made his Formula One debut in 2026.
08:21An F1 car drove through the streets of Delhi.
08:24A country with nearly 80 million fans watched all of it on a streaming platform in a time zone
08:32inconveniently far from where the actual races take place.
08:50In March 2026, India's National Company Law Tribunal approved Adani Enterprises' acquisition of the JP Group's assets,
09:00including the Bood International Circuit.
09:03The deal was valued at approximately 1.7 billion U.S. dollars.
09:09Karan Adani, Managing Director of Adani Ports,
09:13said publicly that he was personally engaged in bringing Formula One back to India.
09:19India's sports minister stood at the circuit and declared,
09:21with some confidence,
09:23that India would have a race in 2027.
09:27Formula One's own spokesperson responded
09:30that a 2027 return was highly unlikely.
09:35Hosting fees for a Grand Prix now range from $70 to $150 million annually.
09:41The calendar is contracted.
09:43The logistics are significant.
09:46The timeline is not the government's to set.
09:50And yet,
09:51the last time India was in this conversation,
09:54in 2011,
09:56it built a $400 million circuit,
09:59put three Grand Prix's on,
10:01and had one of the fastest-growing fanbases in the sport.
10:05The fanbase never stopped.
10:07The infrastructure never went away.
10:10And the political and commercial will,
10:12for the first time in over a decade,
10:15appears to be genuinely aligned.
10:18There is no race confirmed.
10:20There is no date on the calendar.
10:23There is a negotiation in progress.
10:26A circuit under new ownership.
10:28A government that says it wants to remove the tax obstacles
10:32that killed the race in the first place.
10:34And a sport that has publicly acknowledged India
10:37as one of its most valuable markets.
10:4178.8 million fans.
10:44A generation of drivers.
10:46A fanbase that books international flights
10:49to watch races in other countries.
10:51A circuit sitting intact outside New Delhi.
10:55Waiting.
10:57India doesn't need Formula One to validate the love.
11:01The love already exists.
11:03The question is simply whether Formula One
11:06is ready to meet it here.
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