Chennai’s F4 Debut: How A Stray Dog And Safety Concerns Red-Flagged The Race

After many false starts and avoidable issues on Saturday (31 August), the much ballyhooed races as part of first-ever F4 night race in India got underway on the Island Grounds and the nearby earmarked streets in Chennai (grandly named Chennai Formula Racing Circuit) on Sunday.

As it happened, in the first Indian Racing League race which was held in tandem with the F4 Indian Championship, the event had to be red-flagged (halted) because — wait for it — a stray dog had wandered on to the racing area. Well, this is Chennai, what else can you expect?

The race was considerably reduced and restarted later, but the loose canine leading to race disruption showed exactly why Chennai was not ready for such a street circuit race.

Of course, quite a few dogs could be seen roaming on the racing area on the shambolic Saturday when the practice sessions could not proceed as per plans as the track's race worthiness was under question.

Dog Ate My Race, Sir!

Forget the outside political noise, the allegations of corruption and the court case around the race, the events on Saturday showed that this was an ill-conceived effort just to prove some imagined point. The track had safety issues which resulted in the formal FIA licence getting delayed till well past the eleventh hour.

This hung over the event like a persistent monsoon cloud, and the events on the racing day (Sunday) also underscored it. The track could be readied only an hour after the scheduled start time, and the first F4 race saw the arrival of safety car on the opening lap itself (when Zakariya Mohammed went off the track). But this was a race incident, part and parcel of this particular world. 

But the problematic turn-19 (which was the bone of contention for issuing the licence) kept the racers on tenterhooks, and there was an incident on lap 10 involving two cars that led to the race being red-flagged with just 3 minutes left.

These safety issues and animals skedaddling across the circuit found only a passing mention in news reports as the PR machinery of the state government worked overtime to give glowing headlines to a sports event that was actually jinxed right from the start.

Mocking The Everyday Reality Of City’s Residents

It cannot be anyone's sincere claim that state governments should not hold sports events. It does not mean that the administration is shortchanging welfare activities, which of course is the primary goal of any elected government. 

But a street circuit racing event does raise troubling questions when the rest of the city's road infrastructure has literally gone to dust.  The 3.839 km Chennai Formula Racing Circuit is perhaps the only stretch in the city that has no dug up portion.

In a city where practically every road is turned upside down, to hold a street race and also try to make a song and dance of it seems an exercise in callous travesty.

The point is not against holding races. But just against them being rolled out on the streets. It mocks the everyday reality of the hapless denizens of the city. They are actually enduring dirt track racing on a daily basis. 

Why was the state government bent on holding this street circuit race despite the inherent issues? To seek answers to this question would be to dig up (the same word again) into the dark alleys of state politics.

The state administration was also not equipped to understand the nuances of the racing sports and its esoteric organisational rules. 

It is not like organising a Chess Olympiad. From an organisation point of view, it was just an 'event' that the state bureaucracy could pull off. A racing event doesn't belong to that category as the nature of the sport itself is evidently different.

A lot of safety protocols are involved, and also being an event held in the stomach of the city, to keep away its insistent intrusions is tough. And we are not even going into the ethical aspect of having the ear-drum shattering car race within the vicinity of hospitals. (Chennai can, and regularly does, hold race events at the designated track. For the record, the first leg of this Indian Racing League was held at the famous Irungattukottai circuit. Of course, who can forget the craze when the races were held at the hallowed Sholavaram airstrip).

Karivaradhan Would Have Been Aghast   

Street circuits have their charm, and that is why in the F1 calendar this year is seeing a record eight street circuits (Jeddah, Melbourne, Miami, Monaco, Montreal, Baku, Singapore, Las Vegas) out of the 24 races. That 1/3rd of the races are now street circuits indeed show the shift in focus as the authorities want to take the sport closer to people.

But those cities and countries indeed have infrastructure — both civic and sporting — to hold such showpiece events. Street circuits belong to cities with sturdy civic foundations. None of the Indian cities qualify on this count. To think of a street race in India under current circumstances is just Thuglaqian fancy.

Of course, Chennai is not the first Indian city to hold a major street race. Hyderabad already has that distinction. But even Hyderabad's case is no different. What we said of Chennai also holds true for it too.

Also, to hold a motor race on the same evening as that of a major F1 race day shows that organisers had not really thought through the whole thing. If your target is motor sports buff, do you really expect a lot of them to turn up when the likes of Verstappen, Lecrec, Hamilton and Norris were revving up their engines in full glory at the historic Monza circuit?

It is not as if the Indian Racing League Races' dates are cast in stone. For the record, the venues for the last two legs of Indian Racing League 2024 are still to be announced. Such is their tardy approach.

The next leg though will be held at the Kari Motor Speedway, named after that Indian racing legend Sundaram Karivaradhan. The man, who tragically was killed in an air crash, was a big one for tuning and designing race cars and race circuits. But he never really fancied street circuits. For, he believed that car races belonged in circuits built for them.

The man would have been turning in his grave if he were to know that Chennai tried its hand at a street circuit race.