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Follow Us Ravi Shastri believes that India needs to have Formula 1 grace its shores again. Speaking to Sportskeeda in an exclusive interview at the Belgium GP, the former cricketer felt that Formula 1 needed to capitalize on India's growing young audience following the sport.
Shastri sees the younger generation as thorough with the technical understanding of the sport with the amount of information and data available to them. He revealed that his teen daughter was a massive fan of the sport as well.
Following the sport for more than four decades, Ravi Shastri believes F1 is underestimating the Indian youth and their growing interest in the sport in recent years.
Asked by Sportskeeda about how F1 could tap into the mass following in India, Ravi Shastri said:
“My daughter 15 and a half pushing 16. And my country has 1.4 billion people, 70 percent of them are below 30, that’s your fanbase that you’ve got to catch. So my daughter is 15 and half and knows everything about Formula 1, will give me a lesson or two or three. And you can imagine how quickly how the young generation is following the sport. It’s time to capitalize, I want Formula 1 back in my country. I know there was only one event that took place, has to come back.”
He further added:
“You need a fanbase, you need mass audience, you’ve got it, dig deeper and push the barriers. You’ll get it, it’s there. It’s there for you to find it, its there looking at you, 15-16 year olds. You don’t get other sport being followed by 15-16 year olds, not football, to an extent. But when you see 15 and 16 year olds following a sport as sophisticated as Formula 1, it tells you what that generation is about. They are the techie generation, they want timings, they want all the gimmicks the data that comes with the sport. There are abreast.”
Asked if the young Indian generation followed F1 as thoroughly as a fan like him who has watched it for four decades, Ravi Shastri said:
“Absolutely. Three decades below me also, they wont have a clue as to what this young generation understands.”
Ravi Shastri believes that cricket can learn a lot from F1 in terms of fitness, discipline and the physical element involved in the sport. When asked by Sportskeeda, what cricket's takeaway from F1 could be, Ravi Shastri replied:
“Discipline, then focus, its different training. Like I said it gets the physical element, you know like boxing. You take a decision a split second late it could be dangerous for you. It could be costly not just with your bank balance but with your life too. So you know its that element that keeps a guy on guard, keeps him on his toes, doesn’t allow him to relax one bit, plus there’s competition. In sport at times, in teams sport you can take things for granted because other guys might do the job for you on a given day when you’re not hot. Here you’ve got to be hot all the time or it ain’t happening.”
Asked further if the individualistic nature of the sport had lessons for cricket, Ravi Shastri added:
“Yes. It has a lot to teach, each sport teaches the other. From team sport you learn a lot, individuals learn a lot. Individual sport teaches team sport a lot.”
The former India cricket team head coach is the second ex-cricketer to visit an F1 race in the 2023 season, after Yuvraj Singh who visited the Monaco GP as an ambassador for Puma Motorsport.
Amidst summer break from commentating on The Hundred cricket tournament, Shastri visited the iconic old-school circuit of Spa Francorchamps and was mesmerized by the experience.
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