MUMBAI: If you’ve seen the 6,000-odd red and yellow buoys lining a part of the Marine Drive stretch to form a water race track, you’ll know that it’s time for a one-of-a-kind spectacle: the NEXA P1 Panther Powerboat Indian Grand Prix, which begins on Friday.
The tournament represents a big gamble on a reinvented spectator sport, and the potential of using one of India’s richest resources, it’s 7,500 kilometre coastline, as a stage for it to truly come into its own.
“With the P1 Panther Powerboats, we are still very much in uncharted territory in terms of drawing in spectators and interest,” says Vivek Singh, co-founder and joint managing director of Procam International, the company that is backing the event. “The current generation of Panther boats, which can race in just six feet of water, is an incredible invention, because that’s just the depth of a swimming pool. So you have a close-to-shore experience that the spectators can truly enjoy, some of the world’s best pilots and navigators, and Mumbai’s iconic coastline. That makes the spectator potential tremendous,” he says.
This kind of powerboat racing, he says, is a sport that is still very much under invention, since the Panther boats only came into operation about three years ago and there are only about 40 around the world. “There have been a few other events across the world featuring these boats, but this is possibly the biggest event being organised in terms of scale, and ours is one of the first to be classified on the Grand Prix level,” he says.
One of the greatest draws of the sport, and one of the reasons the organisers are banking on it taking off quickly, is that other motor athletes can pick it up with relative ease. “That is something that makes the sport accessible. This year, Gaurav Gill and C.S. Santosh will be piloting two of the boats, and they both learned how to do it in just six weeks.”
He is referring to the first two Indians to pilot power boats. Both come to the sport from different disciplines, something that made the announcement of their participation in the competition a huge surprise.
Mr. Gill is a car rally driver and the winner of several Indian National Rally Championships, besides a couple of Asia-Pacific Rally Championships. He will be piloting for the Ultra Sharks team in the competition. Similarly, Mr. Santosh is a well-known Supercross and rally raid champion biker and the only Indian to finish the gruelling Dakar rally. He will be piloting for the Baleno RS Booster Jets. Both racers undertook extensive training in powerboat racing for the event, which included a week-long course with world speed record holder Neil Holmes, in Southampton, U.K.
Powerboat racing may often be clubbed in popular thinking with sports like Formula 1, which is considered to be something of a luxury sport. However, Mr. Singh says the sport is relatively more accessible. Rather than costing millions of dollars like Formula 1 cars, a Panther powerboat costs about a 1,00,000 dollars. This may still put it out of individual brackets, but could make it a viable option for companies to invest in.
The inaugural event in India will be free to watch. The aim, clearly, is to build a spectator base and promote the sport as a fun visual event.
