Amidst so many franchise sports leagues, X1 Racing League is the latest to join the bandwagon. Indian racers Armaan Ebrahim and Aditya Patel have started this motorsport league and the former thought of this idea because of the large fan base for the sport in India.
“X1 racing is a franchise based motorsport league. We are six franchises from six different cities and have adapted some new race formats which are much shorter than normal races like Formula 1. Nowadays, the attention span of people is really short, so it has to be exciting, fun-filled and with a little bit of drama involved,” Armaan told The Hindu .
Each team will get to pick five drivers — two international and three Indian. One male and a female international driver is mandatory with one domestic Indian driver. It is also interesting to know the contribution of e-sport racing which later offers a chance for the winner to become a racing driver in actual event.
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“E sports is a simulator racing, we go to each of the six franchise cities,” said Armaan.
He added: “The winner of the competition will get contacted by X1 and receive training by experts to become an actual race driver. Basically, motorsport has been termed as an expensive sport. We are just trying to break that barrier by making it accessible. It is a great incentive to get involved in the sport.”
Interestingly, the league will have only one make of cars. It is upto the drivers’ coordination and talent to get the best out of themselves.
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“In the F1 pit stop, the engineers change the tyres but in this league you will see the drivers doing that work. We provide the mechanics, service, engineer and the cars,” said the 30-year-old.
Motorsport is restricted to just three tracks in the country — Buddh International Circuit (BIC) in Greater Noida, Madras Motor Race Track, Chennai and Kari Motor Speedway, Coimbatore.
Armaan hoped better infrastructure will increase accessibility after the league catches the public eye as it’s a technologically driven sport.
Former F1 driver Vitantonio Liuzzi , Chennai team owner Narain Karthikeyan and some top women drivers will be participating in the league which is slated to start from Nov. 30 at the BIC.