Formula One and India!

"Spyker planning to become Force India for 2008"

My night was normal as usual, a guy having his status message as Happy Saraswathi Pooja in gtalk, until I read that headline at the F1 site.

Ever since Mallya took over (bought 51% of the Spyker Ferrari team) the Spyker team, India has been in the news. With a possible Indian Grand Prix debuting as early as 2010, it's pretty obvious we have to make some inroads into F1 and needless to say Mallya's making the right moves. With our own Formula 1 team, its easier to give that Indian touch to the sport.

But hosting a F1 race isn't that easy. The Malaysian government built a separate town (Sepang) just for the sake of the Grand Prix that happens once a year. They couldn't handle the amount of aircrafts at the Kuala Lampur airport, so they built a huge town complete with hotels, malls and an airport, which isn't used at any other time than the race periods. It's a common saying that around 300 Aircrafts complete with high tech machinery and an army of engineers, technicians and helpers arrive and stay for a whole 2 weeks prior to the race!!! Imagine that happening in the Delhi International Airport, organised chaos.

So the main Question is that if Delhi can afford to handle all that. The IOA (Indian Olympic Committee)'s head, Suresh Kalmadi along with Vijay Mallya think so. Hope they are right. We don't wna see sun stroked race drivers in our capital city do we? :P


Update: After reading Dilip's comment, a few points came in. First of all, yes loads of money and foreign attraction and the likes. Let's say after 2 years of hosting the race, there'll be lots of tourists who will come looking to discover India and they might start with Delhi. Is our capital fit enough to handle this sudden explosion, in terms of Infrastructure, Sanitation, Safety? With the Police and ASI unable to stop Graffiti on the Qutab Minar, how can they possibly extend protection to the enormous numbers of tourists? Let's just hope that the whole city undergoes a huge makeover. It's possible, Monaco wasn't such a big deal before the Monaco Grand Prix started. Now, renting a house adjoining the circuit (It's a Street GP, meaning the streets of Monaco will be converted into a Circuit for the race period) costs around $600,000 just for the 3 hours of race duration!!! Qualifying excluded!!!