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Force India F1

F1 cars will sport the Indian flag and colors, confirms Dr. Mallya.

By: Karthik :+: Under: Force India F1, Formula 1, Motor Racing, Sports
On: ⋅ September 12, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya has confirmed the Spyker deal. In an interview with Formula1.com he talks in detail about his plans for the 2008 season.

In answering a specific question about India’s reaction to his purchase Mallya was exuberant.

The excitement was so huge that there are people waiting in line now with their cheque book in their hand trying to partner with us - I have not heard of anything like that in any other part of the world. And when we announced that the Indian flag would be part of the team colours and logo, there was an explosion of excitement romping through the country.

Now that is some amazing marketing strategy. Now if we could find a way to add a vada pav stand…

Talking about how he moved from sponsoring to deciding on buying a team, Mallya said

India is almost a global economy with a very young population - almost 300 million people have good jobs, earn good money and are able to spend it on an international standard. That is my target market. India has one Formula One driver with Narain Karthikeyan and a hopeful in the GP2 series with Karun Chandok, and we have a robust basis in the Indian sports car series. With the object to bring all these assets together, the decision was ‘now or never’.

He also suggested that the budget of the team might go up by about 40%, which is good news for Mike Gascoyne, the Spyker designer who has produced some amazing results at other teams.

The juicy piece about the name of the team was also a subject of discussion, more after the jump.

I don’t know if we can keep the name Spyker, as Spyker is a car company. One thing is for sure, I want to put the word India into the name of the team, but I have not really spent time on the name so far.

And Indian drivers you ask

An Indian team with an Indian driver would be the ideal combination. In the future I will look very carefully into our karting championship to identify talents that can be developed into potential candidates for the team.

Yohann Setna, the seat holder of the India A1GP team, left a comment and confirmed that Karun Chandok was tied to his GP2 duties for 08. With Narain being the only other driver who could possibly drive the car, rumor in the paddock suggests that he will bag Williams race seat from Alex Wurz for 08, leaving Mallya no option but to settle for drivers who are not Indian.

In any case, we will see a lot of more of India in the days to come.

And while I started searching for a picture to add to this post, I came across the Kingfisher World flickr account, which apparently is a personal account of Dr. Mallya. Who knew.

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