It was a Monday. Fabienne Wohlwend was competing in the women-only two-seater W racing series in Europe in 2022 when she got a call from Jon Lancaster. The race driver and instructor had an unusual request—could she get to India by Thursday? A new motorsport league was taking off in the country and he thought it would be a good idea for her to compete outside of Europe and promote the sport in a relatively nascent market.
For Wohlwend, who had also driven in the Ferrari Challenge Europe, it was a spontaneous decision. “I never really thought about it,” she says. She turned up for the Indian Racing Festival (IRF), finishing second twice and winning the team championship with Godspeed Kochi in the inaugural season.
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The 26-year-old took some time getting used to India. No surprises there—Wohlwend is from Liechtenstein, a tiny nation cradled by Germany, Switzerland and Austria, with a population of around 40,000. “Coming from Liechtenstein, where everything is so regulated, it was a culture shock,” she says, laughing over the phone. “But India has its charm; we got on the track, got used to the cars, the team spirit and I had fun. I stayed for a month but it was clear I would come back.”
Wohlwend returned to the IRF next year, and again in 2024, becoming a part of the Shrachi Rarh Bengal Tigers, which replaced Godspeed Kochi from the previous seasons. One of her enduring “nice/bad” memories, she says, remains getting a cut on her hand while trying to uncork a particularly obstinate bottle of champagne on the podium in Hyderabad.
The IRF, which was first announced and conducted in 2019, has six city-based teams that form the Indian Racing League (IRL) and two additional teams in the Formula 4 Indian Championships (F4IC). The former is a four-wheel, gender-neutral racing league, which includes Wohlwend, while F4 is an open-wheel, single-seater racing category intended for junior drivers looking to step up from karting.
Now into its third season, the IRF finds itself on firmer ground after a jittery start to the first iteration in 2019. Plans have scaled progressively to include the initially promised street racing and night races. In the process, the organisers have managed to rope in known names, from actors John Abraham, Arjun Kapoor and Naga Chaitanya to former cricketer Sourav Ganguly, as team owners.
In India, where attitudes towards motorsports have largely been fickle—we staged the Formula One for just three years, organised the Formula E once in 2023 before cancelling the 2024 edition, and postponed this year’s India round of the MotoGP to 2025—the IRF has managed something unique. It just keeps turning up every year.
Chequered history
When race drivers Aditya Patel and Arma an Ebrahim envisaged the X1 Racing League (XIRL) six years ago, they believed they were onto something substantial. The Indian Grand Prix Formula One had come to a grinding halt in the country after running between 2011-13, but not before establishing an interest for motorsports in the country. Emboldened by the success of the Indian Premier League (IPL), leagues were sprouting up for a wide slate of sporting disciplines, from volleyball to arm-wrestling. X1RL was merely following a well-trodden path.
The league had institutional investors, six team owners and it raised “a couple of million dollars to pull it off,” recalls Abhinandan Balasubramanian, a co-founder and operations head of X1RL. “We had $8-9 million worth term sheets, for which due diligence was going on. Then the pandemic hit.”
Stumbling blocks appeared in the first season itself. Besides poor cars and unfinished races, it was the general evisceration of the thrum and drama of live sport that took place in the wake of the pandemic that put a spanner in the works.
The founders of the league sought help from team owners, and Hyderabad’s Akhilesh Reddy heeded the call, bringing in new energy and financial muscle. Racing Promotions Private Limited (RPPL) became the holding company of three racing championships, the IRL, Formula Regional Indian Championship and F4IC.
The IRL has a relay format—each car has two drivers, each team has four drivers, including two Indian, two foreign and one female driver. The pit stop entails a change in driver instead of tyres.
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Each season of the IRL consists of five races held across three to four different venues. This season’s first race was held at Chennai’s Madras International Circuit (MIC), Irungattukottai, in August, followed by the first street night race on Island Grounds, with the subsequent rounds in MIC and Coimbatore. About 2,500 people attended the races at MIC, approximately 20,000 packed the second round, according to the organisers, with ticket prices upwards of ₹1,500. The IRL is an evolved version of the XIRL.
While viewership data is unclear for the races’ broadcast on Star Sports and streamed on OTT platform, Fancode, Reddy points to online mentions of over five billion.
“Since 2022, we have invested close to ₹500 crore,” says Reddy, chairman and managing director of RPPL. “No sport can bring in money overnight, but my estimate is that we might be able to recoup this by 2028-29. I want the league to be self-sustainable. I want team owners to be profitable.”
Bringing up the example of a karting competition held across six-seven cities for young amateur drivers, which gets filtered down to a single winner who earns a free training/internship in a single-seater or Formula 4 car, he says, “That’s a cost of $15,000-1,80,000. We are giving a ₹1.5 crore seat free of cost,” adds Reddy, director at the infrastructure firm Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd (MEIL).
Balasubramanian refers to a three-point formula that makes them work: “In sport, it’s better to be capital-heavy. It’s show business and you are being judged. It’s great to have passion and belief, but just like in the airline business—here, you need to start with some money in the bank. Money in sport is a substitute for trust.”
Insisting on never having to depend on external factors, he endorses an ownership model for cars. “Thirdly, bring professional teams to run these cars, like we have with MP Motorsport and JA Motorsports,” says Balasubramanian.
Behind the wheels
“To come here and develop the (racing) community here; now that’s a privilege,” says Raoul Hyman, part of the Goa Aces team.
A fifth generation Indian from South Africa who now lives in the UK, the 28-year-old fits in somewhere in the middle of the IRL drivers’ roster, in terms of experience and ages that range from 19 to 39. Hyman says that “the vibe” in the league is “super competitive” but high on camaraderie. “The older guys help the younger ones,” says Hyman, who has driven in the Super Formula Championship and been a FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) Formula Regional Americas and FIA Asian Formula 3 champion.
Street racing was one of the stated goals of X1RL, which the organisers could not deliver in the first year. Their keenness for it, according to Balasubramanian, was to “bring the races to the people” rather than the other way around. The street and night race, held in August-September in Chennai, therefore, is seen as one of IRF’s major successes.
Hyman elaborates on the intricacies of night races, having done them in Abu Dhabi and Malaysia, which have F1 tracks, prior to Chennai. He says since the temperature of the track and ambience is higher in the afternoon, it makes a difference in how the car and the gear work. “You and the team have to adapt,” Hyman says over the phone.
Street tracks across the globe are bumpy, Hyman adds, because they are public roads, but he was pleasantly surprised by Chennai roads. “There were some bumps, but they were good—gave the track some character,” says Hyman, having raced on the streets of France, Germany, which were, according to him, bumpier.
When you race on the street, the challenge is the walls. If a driver goes off track on a racing track, there is a chance for recovery. On the streets, going off the track results in hitting the wall, which signals the end of the race. “You need greater concentration. You need to be willing to take the risk because you get more [from the race] by getting closer to the wall,” he adds.
Since India is a bit of a slow starter in motorsport, Hyman says, the country is a couple of years behind in infrastructure and interest. “We are trying to fast-track that process so we can get Indian racing to compete elsewhere.”
The RPPL claims to charge Indian F4 drivers only 30-40% of what they would otherwise spend abroad, including on travel and boarding. The amount the company makes from Indian drivers is only operational cost, says Reddy.
“We are the most budget-effective F4 in the world,” adds Ebrahim. “Young Indians coming out of karting have something in their own backyard, instead of going abroad.”
“This league is making it more affordable and inclusive,” agrees Akhil Rabindra, who races for the Hyderabad Blackbirds. “It’s the most affordable F4 in the world. Still expensive, but we are the most competitive in pricing.”
Blast to the future
Rahul Todi got smitten by the world of fast cars through Formula One, which he saw for the first time in the early 1990s when he moved to Australia as a student. A generational entrepreneur, the managing director of Kolkata-based real estate firm Shrachi Group founded Shrachi Sports earlier this year, besides being the chairman of football club Mohammedan Sporting, which is playing the Indian Super League for the first time this season.
Todi got into the IRL with the Bengal team, investing close to ₹100 crore in the first year and envisaging a future in which India would be a powerhouse in F3. “It’s like in any other sport or business. We have over a hundred crore people here. Add Bangladesh and Pakistan to the mix—go to any part of the world, and you will see a huge number of South Asians. We have a huge market to cater to,” he says.
For any league in India, the financial inflection point is three to four years, Todi adds, and if the IPL could take the time that it did, the IRF is still on track. “The burn period would be shorter now (compared to the IPL, which started in 2008). We are expecting losses in the first two-three years in racing but we are ready for it. We have a conservative four-year business plan. In six years, we will make operating profits,” says Todi, who speaks briskly and enthusiastically, over the phone.
He sees motorsport as a glamorous, glitzy sport, which would attract lifestyle brands to woo a young audience. One of his local sponsors, after witnessing the night race, admitted to Todi that it was the best investment he had made.
The famous owners that the league has managed to include—John Abraham for Goa Aces, Arjun Kapoor for Speed Demons Delhi, Naga Chaitanya for Hyderabad Blackbirds besides Sourav Ganguly for Shrachi Rarh Bengal Tigers—get the league the kind of attention advertising cannot buy. “When John came to the track, he was asking pointed, technical questions, not just how fast the cars go,” remembers Rabindra.
The league now aims to add Formula 3 to its basket of formats by 2026. Reddy dreams of building a completely indigenous set of mechanics, engineers and drivers by 2029.
The league’s aim is to add Formula 3 to its basket of formats by 2026. Reddy dreams of building a completely indigenous set of mechanics, engineers and drivers by 2029. By next year, RPPL aims to add two more street circuits and increase the number of rounds from five to six.
“I feel that 90 percent of Indians like motorsport,” says Reddy. “Take a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, or any good-looking car, even an 80-year-old will stop to look, touch and get to know it. Our aspiration is F1, but we are lacking in the right kind of ecosystem and the path to get into F1,” he adds.
“We will create that ecosystem.”