A decade after the Indian GP, is the market ready to host Formula One again?

"It's lights out and away we go."

We are into yet another season of hearing the iconic start to 22 cars tearing through city streets at speeds most of us can only imagine. Until the last season, it was 10 teams with 20 drivers, while the most recent team joining the grid this season is the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, with Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez as their driver duo.

Before we headed to the circuits for the 2026 Formula One season on March 8, Netflix decided to give fans something to hold onto: a deep dive into all the drama, behind-the-scenes tension, and strategic calls that defined the 2025 season.

Netflix came back with the eighth season of Formula 1: Drive to Survive in the last month. The eight-episode series focused on the chase for the World Drivers' Championship, the tension between the McLaren duo, Max Verstappen's race to the title, Lewis Hamilton's first year at Ferrari, and other notable drivers of the season, including Carlos Sainz, Nico Hulkenberg, Kimi Antonelli, and Charles Leclerc.

While Drive to Survive is not merely a Netflix show, it has given rise to an entirely new fandom for a sport that was once considered a niche interest. According to the most recent data, Formula 1 now counts 827 million fans globally, making it the most-followed annual sporting series in the world, up 12% year on year and 63% since 2018. It is larger than the NBA's global fanbase by over 11%.

The demographic change runs alongside the growth. 43% of the fanbase is now under 35, with 51 million fans added in that age group in a single year. Female fans now make up 42% of the total, up from 37% in 2018, and 48% of all new fans this year have been women. In India specifically, the fanbase stands at 78.8 million.

The pathway new fans take to Formula One has also changed. Beyond Drive to Survive and the upcoming F1: The Movie, social media has become its own entry point into the sport. Creators like Aleesha Arora, who organises Grand Prix watch parties alongside her content, Aditya Dube with his Instagram account as Adiplays, and Omi with FourthSectorF1 have built communities around the sport in India, bringing in viewers who might never have sought it out through conventional broadcasting.

These creators create videos including explainers about the sport, taking their followers along the masterclass of entering into the fandom, giving the latest updates about the sport and the organisation that formulates rules and regulations for the races. Each of them has 40k plus followers individually, and their videos collect thousands of likes within hours of posting them.

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For Indian fans, the sport, however, also carries a particular history.

The context matters. The Adani Group is currently in the running to acquire Jaiprakash Associates Ltd, the Jaypee Group's flagship company, which owns the Buddh International Circuit. If that acquisition goes through, control of the circuit would transfer to the Adani Group, which would then be positioned to open negotiations with Formula One's commercial rights holders and the relevant government bodies on both the tax classification and race hosting terms.

When the Indian Grand Prix last ran in 2013, the brands attached to it were a snapshot of Indian corporate ambition at the time: Bharti Airtel, Kingfisher, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, Tata Communications, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero Motors, Mercedes and Shell, among others.

The inaugural Indian Grand Prix, held at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida in 2011, drew unprecedented television audiences in the country. According to a survey by TAM Sports, the race recorded average Television Rating Points (TVRs) six times higher than any other Formula One Grand Prix that year.

The survey tracked live viewership of both the qualifying session and the main race across six metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru.

By 2012, F1's audience in India had grown further. Data from ESS indicated that the sport had reached approximately 24.7 million viewers across the country, with particularly strong interest among younger audiences.

Apart from the numbers, another memory etched in the fans' memories is Sebastian Vettel's iconic bow down to his Infini RebBull Racing livery, celebrating his fourth F1 World Championship in India 2013.

A revived race under new ownership would draw a different, and likely broader, commercial field. There is also speculation about what an Adani-owned circuit could mean beyond just hosting a race, with the group's sports arm, Adani Sportline, potentially opening the door to a wider involvement in the sport.

The Indian Racing League's Goa Street Race marks another step in the gradual revival of circuit racing in India, and much of that momentum is being driven by who owns the teams, not just who drives in them.

The series has drawn a roster of owners whose combined reach spans cricket, Bollywood, and regional cinema. Indian cricketer Sourav Ganguly fronts the Kolkata Royal Tigers. Bollywood actor John Abraham owns Goa Aces JA Racing, Arjun Kapoor backs Speed Demons Delhi, and South Indian actors Naga Chaitanya and Kichcha Sudeep own Hyderabad Black Birds and Kichcha's Kings Bengaluru, respectively.

Each of these personalities commands fans that extends well beyond traditional motorsport audiences. Their involvement might bring the sport into conversations it would not otherwise reach in the cricket-obsessed nation.

For a sport that lost its Indian race to a tax classification, having 78.8 million fans in the country, and the possibility of returning to a circuit after over a decade, is not a small development.