New Delhi, Nov 12 — Indian racing driver Jeet Jhabakh reasoned out that the limited Indian presence in Formula One is due to the sport being "extremely expensive" and that the drivers don't get the "infrastructure and backing" required to excel at the biggest and most prestigious car racing in the world.
Speaking to IANS, Jeet, who recently won the FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, pointed out that Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok made it to the F1 from India and opened the doors for more from the nation, highlighting that India has talent but the expense of F1 is something which is very hard to cope with.
"The fact that both Karun Chandhok and Narain Karthikeyan went to Formula One opened the doors for Indian motorsport, right, and a lot of youngsters felt that they could reach the top step because two of them have already done it, (so) why not us, but most of us, including me, we don't realise that it is an extremely expensive sport," Jeet told IANS.
"The amount of money that goes into it is phenomenal, and the amount of time that you have to put into it is absolutely crazy and just like any other sport, right, you put in a lot of time," he added.
A modern F1 car costs around Rs 100-180 crore. The teams have hefty budgets in the sport and are constantly working on research and development, upgrades, and many more. This makes the sport very expensive.
Jeet highlighted that India has a junior series, the F4 Indian Championship, which "is competitive", but when a driver moves to the international arena, budget becomes a barrier.
"But here you require a machine for it (F1), and your machine has to constantly get upgraded so that you're in the mix with the top guys, so it is very expensive, and even the junior series in India is competitive because it is made available for a lot of us, but as soon as you go international, you realise that the money involved is so high unless and until someone is backing you or you have your own backing, it's very tough to climb up the step consistently.
"Some of us might be extremely good too, but money becomes a little bit of a barrier over there, so if you don't have sponsorships, no matter how much time and effort that you put in, it's a very, very slight chance that you'll be picked up by one of the teams, and in Formula 1, you have 22 slots now, and people across the world are trying to get to the top.
"So just like any other sport, you have very few slots; you are fighting for it and in a place where you don't have as much infra or as much backing, it becomes slightly more difficult, but again, talent exists; we have a lot of great drivers over here; we just need the right infrastructure to push us up there," Jeet said.
To date, Karthikeyan and Chandhok are the only Indians to have competed in an F1 Grand Prix. Arvid Lindblad, the current Racing Bulls driver, is of Indian origin through his British-Indian mother and Punjabi maternal grandparents, but he was born in Surrey and races under the British flag.
Jeet made history in the FIA APRC when he won the title with co-driver Musa Sherif, making them the first all-Indian driver-and-co-driver pair to win the crown. He clinched the title in the two-wheel-drive, not the four-wheel-drive. This was the first time in the FIA APRC's 38-year history that a driver using a 2WD won a title rather than a conventional 4WD driver.
He reflected on his achievement, saying that the ceiling in Indian motorsport has been raised with his win. "Honestly, I don't know whether it's still sunken fully; it is something that I honestly didn't expect to get in such a short duration of my rallying career," Jeet said.
"I've been in motorsport for a while, but rallying has hardly been two years for me; this is my third full year. We went international, and it kind of clicked for us, so I'm very grateful for this overall experience, and for Indian motorsport, I think the ceiling moved, which is very interesting," he added.