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The Formula1 carnival has finally reached the Indian shores.  The first day of practise has happened.  The race was as inagurated by our honourable chief guest “a dog”.  They never fail to make their presence felt.  Remember the Commonwealth Games.  Well, its better having a dog on the track than Suresh Kalmadi who is cooling heels in the Tihar Jail post all the scams.

Other than being dusty, the track seems to have got a huge thumbs up from the F1 boss, teams and players.  Anyway building the whole thing up in just 2 years has been a humungous effort.  Its the first time ever and am sure the builders (Jaypee) would learn from this effort.  The next year is gonna be awesome.  As of now the whole place looks like just another track anywhere else.  By the next year, Jaypee plans to insert some “Indianness” into the whole thing.

As long as the Indian government stays away from anything related to organising anything, am happy.  Good to see  a much much professional job by the private sector.

All pictures courtesy: ESPN

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Mallya would have gone crazy dancing after Giancarlo Fisichella not only grabbed the pole position in the Belgian race, but also finished second in the actual race.  With this Force India has finally opened its account since its debut in the Formula 1 racing almost a year and a half ago.

Fisichella scored a surprise pole position Saturday, in the first pole for the team owned by the Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya, who owns the Kingfisher beverage and airline companies. And had Raikkonen not passed him near the start of the race after the Finn profited from a felicitous off-track excursion and then a safety car period after a pileup that took out some other contenders, Fisichella would have won the race.

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Above picture source: Dandystyle

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Watch the webcast of the global launch of the car at the Force India website.

The drivers for the year 2008 are

Giancarlo Fisichella
Adrian Sutil
Vitantonio Liuzzi

Above picture courtesy: Paddocktalk

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Vijay Mallya is a shrewd businessman. He had the chance to name the team as Kingfisher. Afterall, its his flagship brand. Maybe he wanted to tug at the Indian’s heart. Another good news is that he has hinted that he might not go entirely native by having Narain Karthikeyan at the wheel. He’s in talks with Ralf Schumacher, who happens to be a good friend of Mallya and had visited India at his behest some months ago. So, it could be Ralf and the current driver Adrian Sutil (Germany) in the driver seat for 2008.

“The critical issue is: ‘India on the F1 grid,’ ” Mallya said in an interview at Monza, Italy, days after the deal was announced in September. “You will get 200 million fans overnight. It’s humongous by world standards. It’s good for Formula One, it’s good for the sport, it’s good for the country.”

Mallya has got 2 full years to go to fine tune before the F1 reaches India in 2010 and am sure it would be pure mayhem then. Knowing Mallya, he had once said on national television “When i set my mind on something, i do it”. And i love the conviction of that man.

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