After their first announcement in August many who attended it thought it was like going to a wine tasting session for a newbie because once they left they had absolutely no idea what they tasted and whether it was good or bad and if this was an announcement worth writing about as it gave very vague details about everything.
Four months later i-1 super series has finally announced its driver line up, though the selection criteria for which even the organizers aren’t willing to discuss.
Like any other team based championship each team will have 3 drivers:
Driver 1: International Driver
Driver 2: Indians with International experience or Drivers of Indian origin residing in a foreign country
Driver 3: Indian driver with minimal or no international experience.
While only driver no. 1 & 2 are guaranteed a drive each weekend, driver 3 gets a chance to test the car on Friday before the race weekend and fill in if driver no. 1 & 2 somehow don’t make it on time for the races, though with the kind of money on offer during offseason we doubt any of the drivers have an excuse for not showing up.
The International Drivers include Jacques Villeneuve, Giancarlo Fisichella, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Karun Chandhok, Jean Alesi, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Alex Yoong, Sakon Yamamoto, Mika Salo, Cyndie Allemann and Pippa Mann.
The Indian drivers with international experience or drivers of Indian origin residing in foreign countries includes: Neel Jani, Armaan Ebrahim, Parthiva Sureswaren, Zaamin Jaffer, Mathias Lauda, Aditya Patel, Akhil Khushlani, Phiroze Billmoria.
Indian drivers: Gaurav Dalal, Ashwin Sundar, Vishnu Prasad, Chirag Malhotra, Abdul Ahmed, Raj Bharath, Ameya Walavalkar, Sahil Shelar, Amritajit Ghosh, Sailesh Bolisetti.
We believe Narain Karthikeyan has opted not to participate in the i1 Super Series as of now, though recent news reports claim that negotiations are on and Machdar Motorsports needs to come back with a better offer for him, Gaurav Gill had refused to participate in the series as the money being offered was below his expectations keeping in mind his experience as a rally driver and Parth Ghorpade whose name was part of the initial list of drivers surprisingly his name was missing in the list of drivers at the media unveiling
Whether there will be 9 or 10 teams in this championship or only 5 is something nobody has been informed of though as of now only five team owners have been announced of the 10 promised during their first announcement in August.
Machdar Motorsports has opted for a city-team based format for the i-1 Super Series copying the format of the the Indian premier league, something most fans/owners might not be able to relate to as there is only one race weekend in India, even though Machdar Motorsports has selected most drivers from the cities where they expect someone to have a team/franchise apart from Amrittajit, Karun, Ameya, Armaan and Aditya the remaining Indian drivers aren’t names you would recollect in various cities.
The championship is going to have a practice/testing session on Friday followed by two 30 minute races each race weekend.
The Final FIA approved racing schedule:
22nd January, 2012- Sepang Circuit international Circuit-Kuala Lumpur- Malaysia
4th February,2012-Bahrain International Circuit-Sakhir-Bahrain
11th February,2012-Losail International Circuit- Qatar
26th February,2012-Buddh International Circuit-Noida-India
10th March,2012-Yas Marina-Abu Dhabi-UAE
The car being used for this series is the two-seater Radical SR-3, the suppliers of the car claim that it can reach 0-100 in about 3.1 seconds flat and is a very noisy car with a 1500cc RPE engine with twin battery. The car will be a big step up from what Vishnu Prasad or Sahil were used to driving in the Volkswagen Polo-R cup but they shouldn’t face much difficulty adapting to this car if they are given sufficient time during the trackdays to get used to it, for someone like Karun or Jacques Villeneuve this will be a step down from what they are used to driving which should give us some interesting races as all the drivers will be in similar cars.
A lot of things have changed in the last 4 months maybe something the organizers din't anticipate during their first announcement in August like the series was initially suppose to have 9 race weekends of which 2 race weekends were to be held in India and the series was scheduled to start in December 2011 which was later postponed to January 8th and now finally to January 22nd.
Tthough like Armaan Ebrahim mentioned in an interview today for the first time i'll be paid for racing internationally and I don't have to go on searching for sponsorship to race internationally, just sums up how the budding talent associated with it will be looking forward to this series and wishing it will bring about a lot of changes in the motorsports scenario in India.
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