India’s growing participation in motorsports

Other Achievements

During the 1990s Vijay Mallaya’s Kingfisher had sponsored the then Benetton F1 team. Also, TATA sponsored Jordan, Williams and HRT during Karthikeyan’s association with them.

8 Sep 1996: A view of Jean Alesi of France and the Benetton team driving during the Italian grand prix at Monza in Italy. Mandatory Credit: Pascal Rondeau/Allsport

Hero MotoCorp has recently buyed 49.2% stake of Eric Buell Racing and has entered the AMA Pro Racing Superbikes Championship in USA.

India was to launch its own racing league called the i1 Super Series. The races were to be held at India, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Bahrain and Qatar. Also, the series had succeeded to rope in former Formula 1 drivers like Jean Alesi, Giancarlo Fisichella and Heinz Harald Frentzen among others to participate in the series. Besides them, many Indian drivers were also given the chance to race in it in order to provide more exposure to the country’s racing talent. With the pre-season testing also completed, the season was to commence from January 2013 onwards, but currently it has been put on hold.

Though, India did not garner much success in the 20^th century, but with the dawn of the 21^st century, hopes have been increased highly due to the emergence of young talent in the country, who have indeed shown that they have the mettle to survive and succeed in the sport in the future and will bring a lot of laurels to their country. Formula 1 has now started to establish its foothold in the country and if it becomes more popular, then surely it will also open the gates for other such similar motorsports to follow in the future.