Force India:There is a new team on the Formula One circuit, bringing new money and colour to a jaded scene, writes Justin Hynes
Formula One's seasonal new car launches don't generally offer much in the way of deep insight into how teams are fairing in their progression to the first race of the season. You are as likely to hear the statement: "Frankly, the car is pretty rubbish and we're currently nowhere", as you are to hear paparazzi say "Poor Britney, do you think we're making it worse?"
Despite the tedium of individual launches, viewed as a whole they do often act as a weathervane for prevailing winds within the sport.
This year has been interesting in that regard. McLaren opted for a dull factory-based launch at the Mercedes base in Stuttgart. Ferrari did the same. Renault moved out of its Paris factory to stage its launch in its Paris communications centre. So far, so downbeat. But then last week, half a world away, Formula One's traditional blend of the grand and the gaudy came back with a bang.
In Mumbai, the sport's latest adventurers, the new Force India team, brought a bit of Bollywood to Bernie-land with a lavish, star-studded launch. Hundreds of thousands were spent, rivers of champagne flowed and hyperbole was over-inflated to Zeppelin-like proportions.
"After the excellent testing times we have had, I feel confident that my goal of a podium finish at the Indian Grand Prix of 2010 is realistic," announced the team's flamboyant owner, Dr Vijay Mallya, a bejewelled character so bling he makes Flavio Briatore look dowdy by comparison.
This kind of hot air has been spouted at every launch by every new team boss since time immemorial and Mallya, a F1-mad billionaire who has previously dumped money into the black hole that is Toyota's F1 project, is seen by most as just another cash cow brought dumbly to the milking parlour by Bernie Ecclestone.
Mallya, though, may be different. He has a plan. For him, F1 is not simply another expensive plaything to add to his collection of breweries, distilleries, airlines and cricket teams. It is an expression of economic ambition, of Indian national pride and, thus, a golden business opportunity.
"I believe that F1 can be profitable if we can stimulate this country's interest in motorsport. There are 500 million people in India under the age of 25, many of them benefiting from our country's economic boom.
"They want to mark themselves out from the crowd, to buy a pair of Hugo Boss jeans rather than a domestic brand. We are all clamouring for glamour in one form or another, whether we admit it or not. And Formula One is the high point of glamour in sport, something that can ignite the passion and pride of this country."
It is a mantra that is being oft-repeated in the Near and Far East and is rapidly forming the shape of things to come in Formula One. A jaded, recessionary European audience has long lived with F1's mix of thrills and dollar bills. Unless it can provide sporting drama it is simply a procession of spoiled rich men chasing advertising revenue.
In emerging economies such as India and China, Formula One is the ultimate expression of all that is high-tech, forward-looking and glamorous about sport and, more importantly, themselves. If India can break into this Eurocentric gathering of plutocrats then surely India's businessmen, its sportsmen and, by extension, its people have truly arrived.
And F1 is happy to exploit the new powerhouses' desire to jump on to the bandwagon and is welcoming the investment openly.
The struggling Japanese-owned Super Aguri team, launched in 2006, is in danger of going under as it has failed to secure enough sponsorship to see it through the season. Step forward a consortium headed by India's Spice telecoms company, only too willing to buy into the team and promote Indian business.
And it is not just the teams that have attracted interest. In 2010 F1 will travel to India to race for the first time after Ecclestone last year signed a deal with the Indian Olympic Committee to stage a race in New Delhi.
It is not just the Indians who are changing the way F1 works. Middle Eastern interest in F1 is at a peak too. The government of Bahrain (which already hosts a grand prix annually) bought a stake in the McLaren group of companies. Previous to its Indian ownership, the Spyker team had received investment from the Middle Eastern group, Mubadala. The organisation, an agency of the Abu Dhabi government, also bought a 5 per cent stake in Ferrari. Abu Dhabi will stage its first F1 race next year on a street circuit on a purpose-built island which will feature a Monaco-style marina section.
China, a GP host since 2004, is also pushing. Young driver Ho-Ping Tung, half-Dutch, half-Chinese, is being quietly championed by Ecclestone and his associates, and will embark on a second season of F1 feeder series GP2 this year. In 2003, Hong Kong-based Formula Racing Developments was tasked with developing a Chinese F1 team to be called Shangsai FRD and while that trail appears to have gone cold, the team is still actively promoting young drivers as future F1 talent.
And the deals go on. Singapore will stage its first race on a street circuit in September. Even more importantly, this will be F1's first night race, offering new, hugely expensive thrills, paid for by a compliant eastern powerhouse to suit European viewing schedules. Korea has signed up to stage a race in 2010 at a harbour-side circuit in Yeongnam, some 200km south of Seoul.
Force India's launch was greeted with cynical snorts by jaded F1 veterans who feel they have seen it all before - these "know-nothings" will be asset-stripped and sent on their way by F1's old school robber barons like so many others before them.
But that attitude, patronising and imperialistically Victorian in its view of new world ambition, is sadly outmoded.
Mallya has already committed to putting an extra $50 million (€34.47 million) into the coffers of his team in 2008. And there is more to come: "I want to bring in some of India's huge expertise in research and development. People think of India as a country steeped in history, with all its archaeological monuments and so on; it is time they saw our modern face."
And that face, gaudy and gauche though it may initially be, will be the face of the future Formula One.