Still no ticket sales though, BookMyShow, the official ticketing partners for the Indian Grand Prix have assured that the ticket management would be top class and they are just waiting for a go-ahead from the event organizers (the Jaypee group).

Reacting to concerns on the ticketing , Ashish Hemrajani, CEO of Big  Tree Entertainment was quoted as saying to a major Indian daily:

"You’d never face that kind of problem here,"

"That’s really our strength ; excellent customer support, a robust system and the focus on technology.

"It’s all about technology. If you know that you are going to get that kind of traffic, you have to learn to manage it. We will ensure anything like that does not happen.

"We do ticketing for events, concerts, plays. In the Indian Premier League  we do it for Mumbai, Delhi, Punjab and Rajasthan.

"Even in IPL, there was tremendous rush but nothing went wrong. We are used to handling it. Our system works seamlessly." Hemrajani said

Its good news for the millions of formula one fans in India and also people who just end up everywhere no matter what the event is. The formula one circus is all set to land in India for the 2011 season. The race is scheduled for October 30 2011 and the buzz is already starting to grow. The company responsible for the Indian Grand Prix in India has already started talking about tickets.

The October 30 event will have 3 days of tickets, the first day would be practice sessions, the second day would be more practice and qualifying while Sunday i.e. October 30 would be the raceday. A leading Indian daily reported a Jaypee Sports official saying :

“We will open online booking for the event within a month. The ticket prices will also be fixed soon,” a spokesperson for Jaypee Sports said.

“Ticket slabs are likely to ensure entry for students as well as corporate entities, as we want to attract racing enthusiasts from every strata of the society.”

So it seems that ticket pricing will vary from cattle class to obscenely expensive , still trying to get some media passes for the event. F1chronicles.com is arguably India’s largest formula one blog and we will be proudly reporting from the grand stands, media passes or not.

The Jaypee Group confirmed the departure of Mark Hughes, the reason given for his deaprture from the Group was ‘due to Personal Reasons’. However is rumour-ville is to be believed Mark Hughes left to join the Abu Dhabi GP. Hughes himself confirmed the news saying that he was working with the Abu Dhabi GP but he is still associated with Jaypee and advising on the Indian Grand Prix event.

Meanwhile the Jaypee group announced the replacement for Mark Hughes as Azhar Ghazili who has previous experience with the formula one race at Malaysia.

"Mr Ghazali is a very capable man and he’s more than making up for Mr Hughes’s absence," the company remarked.

We sure hope so !

Since that time formula one’s India connection has grown. Some of India and formula one’s connections are ::

1. Force India formula one team owned by Mr. Vijay Mallya, head of the UB Group.

2. Williams formula one team is sponsored by Indian corporate house, the TATA Group.

3. Kingfisher sponsors the Toyota formula one team.

4. Narain Karthikeyan became the first ever Indian to compete in formula one in the Jordan F1 team.

5. Karun Chandhok recently completed a test session in Red Bull formula one car, he is said to be the next big Indian in formula one. Backed by Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore, he is sure to make it big.

And the biggie :: India is all set to host a formula one grand prix in 2010 , just cant wait to hear the sound of formula one engines in India !!!!

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