India revives Formula 1 return bid with a brand new task force

On 15 September 2026, India's Union Sports Minister, Mansukh Mandaviya, announced a ten-member task force to assess the feasibility of reviving Formula One in the country. The committee, chaired by NITI Aayog programme director and adviser Yugal Kishore Joshi, has a clear brief: draft a coordinated roadmap for the sport's return "so that we can host a race in 2028."

Those are the two bodies whose predecessors' decisions effectively ended the sport's last Indian chapter. India has said it wants F1 back before, but what is different this time is who has been put in the room to stop the same mistake from repeating.

What Ended the Last Indian Grand Prix

The Indian Grand Prix ran for three editions at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida from 2011 to 2013, with Sebastian Vettel winning all three for Red Bull. The circuit itself, built by Jaypee Sports International at a reported cost of ₹2,000 crore and rated FIA Grade 1, was never the problem. The commercial structure around it was.

Jaypee had signed a $40 million Race Promotion Contract with Formula One World Championship Ltd, plus a separate licensing agreement on F1 branding. Under Indian tax law, that arrangement created a "permanent establishment" for FOWC, triggering a 40% withholding tax on the UK company's race income. Separately, the Sports Ministry declined Jaypee's request for a customs duty waiver on imported race equipment — engines, tyres, disassembled car components — reasoning that F1 did not qualify as "purely a sport" and was instead treated as entertainment and commercial activity.

One structural fact stands independent of anything the new task force does: the entertainment tax that broke the 2013 race no longer exists in its old form, having been subsumed into the Goods and Services Tax from 1 July 2017. States can no longer apply a standalone entertainment levy. Yet unresolved questions remain over how F1's UK-sourced hosting income would be taxed and how customs duties on imported equipment would be treated — both live issues for the CBIC and CBDT representatives now sitting at the table.

A New Owner and a Bigger Balance Sheet

BIC's ownership has changed since 2013. With Jaiprakash Associates Ltd in financial distress, the Adani Group emerged as the winning bidder in a deal reported at approximately ₹14,535 crore. Karan Adani, who describes a personal passion for the sport dating back to the Michael Schumacher era, has said he is "personally engaged in terms of bringing Formula 1 back into India." The practical significance is financial: current hosting fees are estimated around $50 million a season, a figure Jaypee struggled to sustain, and Adani's balance sheet is viewed as materially better placed to absorb that cost.

BIC has not been dormant, staging MotoGP Bharat in 2023 as a proof of concept. That momentum, however, has been uneven, with the 2024 round cancelled and the 2025 edition pushed to 2026.

Building on Fan Numbers — and Facing a Timeline Problem

The government's underlying argument is that the Indian market has outgrown the one F1 left in 2013. A 2025 survey by F1 and the Motorsport Network put India's fan base at 78.8 million, up from roughly 60 million in 2024. FanCode, F1's exclusive Indian broadcast partner, has extended its rights through 2028 and doubled its platform-wide user base. Yet F1's own leadership remains more cautious, with CEO Stefano Domenicali saying only that the sport would be there "one day and in the right condition."

As the sport runs a 24-race season close to its practical ceiling, adding an Indian round would likely require calendar expansion or displacing another venue — a commercial negotiation that sits outside India's control. Mandaviya's 2027 target had already slipped to 2028 by September, against the backdrop of two failed revival attempts in 2015 and 2016.

None of this guarantees a 2028 Grand Prix, but this time the specific mechanism that killed the race is being addressed directly rather than assumed away. With the task force sitting under NITI Aayog and folded into the government's broader "Play in India" push, the institutional weight behind this attempt is genuinely new. Whether it translates into a race will depend less on fan-base charts than on whether the CBIC and CBDT representatives in that room reach a different conclusion than their predecessors did.