Was it a miracle or was it just good luck, but we did it as a nation.
Poor Past:
All of us had our apprehension about F1 race in India.
We cannot forget the fiasco in commonwealth Games held a few months back in New Delhi.
The Arrangements were inadequate and so sloppy that as a country we got a bad name.
The International committee threatened to stop the games but somehow the situation was saved by the Indian Government.
The Government has since then initiated cases against Suresh Kalmadi and others for misusing the funds.
With this background as a nation we were very nervous about F1 event, but the arrangements were really world class and the track a beauty.
The Buddh International Circuit:
The circuit is 5.14 Kms long and it has been designed by the famous circuit designer Hermann Tilke.
It has an interesting feature that cars can reach a maximum speed of 320 kmph making it the second fastest circuit after Monza in Milan, Italy.
The expected lap time around is 1 minute 27 seconds approximately and the race would have 60 laps.
Whatever we could see on the TV it really looked great and the International Committee of Car Racing has appreciated the arrangement.
Of course there was a stray dog menace just a day before the event and the same was reported in the press, which was really embarrassing as such intrusion of the dog on a race day would have caused serious accidents.
Car racing is a dangerous sport which leads to serious accidents and sometimes deaths on the track, which we have witnessed in the best of venues. We as a country have inadequate resources to cater to the injured and such accidents would have added to our woes.
The security was strong and well deployed after the fiasco of Metallica which was cancelled due to poor security arrangements.
Tickets:
The tickets were priced from Rs 2500 with 6500 seats to Rs 35000 for 20156 seats, the median being Rs 6500 for 36838 seats. The weighted average cost per ticket works out to be Rs 13062 per seat.
It is a big price to pay for an event but it is worthwhile as such events have never ever been held in India before.
The Race: 30.10.11
What a race it was, once again Sebastian Wettel of Red Bull won the race.
He was always in the lead and did not allow the second driver Jenson Button of McLaren to overtake him.
He finished the race in 1Hr: 30Min: 35.002Seconds. With Jenson doing it in 1Hr: 30Min: 43.435Seconds.
As you see it was close which is the case with F1 racing.
This was Sebastian’s eleventh victory in 17 races this season.
The third place was won by Fernando Alonso of Ferrari.
Indian Driver Narain Karthikeyan was participating and he did proud to India.
Mr. Adrian Sutil finishing 9Th for Sahara Force India and Karthikeyan finishing 17Th for Hispania.
Crash:
The crash of Felipe Massa of Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton of McLaren was unfortunate and Hamilton finished at the seventh place. He really made up for the time lost due to the crash.
Felipe Massa could not even complete the race.
Audience:
The crowd was 90000 plus and to manage this huge crowd would have been tough for the UP police.
Kudos to the authorities for managing the event without any untoward incident.
The race itself was like any other F1 race and it evoked huge clientele thro TV and other medium.
The reporters from all over the world were there to cover the event.
Celebrities:
There were many celebrities who witnessed this epoch making event.
Shahrukh Khan, SachinTendulkar, Arjun Rampal,Priety Zinta,Rowan Atkinson many other HNI’s graced the event.
Sachin had the great task of waving the chequered flag at the end of the race.
Image of India:
India now would be on the Tourist map more so because the F1 would have brought in many foreign guests and they would have savored our cuisine and our hospitality.
There would be no looking back now; India can only go ahead with such great events in future.
The Authorities need to keep the venue spick and span and good maintenance over the years is a must to ensure world class facility.
Kudos to Ms Mayavati the chief minister of UP and the Jaypee group which constructed the stadium and organized the event at Greater Noida.
Here is wishing India all The Best to manage such events in future.
We are proud to be Indians.
Mera Bharat Mahan.
2 comments:
Thanks to you for presenting the whole Indian F1 event in a nutshell. But I strongly disagree with you on the fruitfulness of the event.
India is in the world tourist map for a long time for its natural beauty, holy places & some great architectural marvels by our ancestors, she’s never short of foreign tourist ( In the year 2010, 5.58 million foreign tourists visited India). Although I agree that the F1 tourists come with a fat purse, but the crème de la crème always prefer Monaco.
But my real issue with F1 is the necessity of organizing such sporting extravaganza. (Is F1 a sport? I doubt. It’s a platform for car & tyre makers to show their engineering acumen to world.)
India is a country of 1.2 billion plus people (and it’s growing every second). But we have to satisfy ourselves with 1 or 2 medals in every Olympic Games. And those are also bronze or silver medals (Avinab Bindra is 1st individual gold medal winner). Total no of Olympic medals won after independence (in 16 editions) are 15. Rank in 2008 Olympics is 50 (Kenya is no 13 & Ethiopia is no 18).
Football is the most popular sport of the world. We will be No. 1 from the bottom very soon. Even Bangladesh & Nepal are in better position than us.
Hockey, once we dominated every country, now every country dominates us. Last Olympic medal won at 1980.
If this is the state of our standing in world sport (by the way, I want to clarify that for me cricket is just a British colonial sport played by 10-12 countries, unnecessarily hyped by Indian media); then what is the objective of arranging gala sporting events? P. T. Usha rightly said that it’s a criminal waste of money. It’s better to invest the money in grassroots sporting infrastructures. When an aspiring athlete can’t get two square meals a day, then how could we expect that he will reach to the pinnacle?
If India really wants to be super power then it has to produce a bunch of world class sportsman who could dominate the world stage in their category. Otherwise we have to be content with one Saina Nehwal or Lee-Hesh who make it to the top entirely with the financial support of their family.
I’ll be really proud to be an Indian when India will become a force to be recon with in global sporting stage.
I’ll be really enlightened if you please comment on my observation.
Dear Debanjan,
It is true that we may not be able to afford the luxury of car racing as India is teeming with a huge population whose priority is roti Kapada & Makan.
If it is so then do we need many other extravagant display of sports like IPL,Commonwealth etc.
There is no doubt that people of this country deserve a better life and probably with the help of the revenue of such sports the Government can ameliorate the conditions of the masses.
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