Safety concerns dominate chaotic opening day of Chennai night street race

Chennai’s night street race faced delays due to safety concerns, but eventually kicked off with high-speed action.

There were sky-high expectations and buzz leading up to the second round of the Indian Racing Festival at the Chennai Formula Racing Circuit. It was billed as the country’s first-ever night-street racing event, where fast cars went around some of the major landmarks in the city, which has long been considered the cradle of motorsports in India.

But the opening day of the weekend turned out to be a damp squib for the fans as the organisers couldn’t get the circuit ready in time for the action to start as scheduled on Saturday (August 31, 2024) afternoon.

Safety concerns at a few corners of the 19-turn layout meant the organisers had to rework some corner profiles to make the circuit conform to the safety norms required by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the governing body for four-wheel motorsports.

The FIA Circuit Commission member Giuseppe Muscioni inspected the track on Friday, gave provisional approval and also suggested modifications at a few corners for safety reasons. These had to be implemented before racing could get underway. The main concern was the high approach speed into these corners, prompting changes to slow the cars down.

The major headache was at turn-19, which was the last corner exiting Swami Sivananda Salai back onto the start-finish straight on Marina Beach Road.

“In turn-19, the approach speed into that left-hander was very fast, so we had to slow the cars down.

“This meant we had to do a lot of work and also rearrange the Tecpro barriers at that corner,” said Akbar Ebrahim, President of the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India (FMSCI), the governing body for motorsports in India.