Photo: Mygale
The creation of a new street circuit in Chennai was announced on Wednesday, with its first ever event set to include a night race for the Indian Formula 4 championship.
There is already a permanent circuit west of the city, with a long history of hosting single-seater racing, and the new venue will be located just 450 metres from the Bay of Bengal using roads encircling the Island Grounds fairground as well as going around the Chennai’s Victory War Memorial and crossing four bridges.
The 2.17-mile track will run in an anti-clockwise direction and feature 19 corners, with the pitlane and paddock located on Island Ground. Driven International, the design group behind the track, also created India’s Hyderabad street circuit that was added to the Formula E calendar this year.
Indian F4 and the Indian Racing League will inaugurate the ‘Chennai Formula Racing Circuit’ on December 9/10, although it is yet to be confirmed when that will lie in Indian F4’s schedule as a 2023 calendar is yet to be released.
Chennai lies in the state of Tamil Nadu, and the support of its government and sports development authority have been crucial in turning the street circuit – which was the idea of Indian F4’s promoter Racing Promotions Private – into a reality.
Elsewhere in Asia there are other junior single-seater plans moving closer to fruition.
Although the provisional Formula Regional Asian Championship calendar is already out, an official announcement of it and the series’ plans for 2023 is not expected until next week. FRAC’s three-round schedule is set to follow the same calendar as the revived Formula 4 South East Asia series, with round one at Zhuhai in October then back-to-back visits to Sepang at the end of November and start of December.
There is also rumours of a new F4 series being launched in the Middle East to go alongside the exiting F4 United Arab Emirates championship. Indian F4 was supposed to have its first season last year, but it was postponed then cancelled.