Without big ideas, the world could become a pointless place. These need not even amount to anything, but the prospect of them coming alive is enough sustenance. At the Yas Marina Circuit on Tuesday, a big idea was coming to life (and Abu Dhabi is a suitable location for big ideas). It is that India is about to become a global motorsport power.
This is less hyperbolic than it sounds and also more hyperbolic, for now at least. That is the beauty of the big idea. Less than two months ago, Delhi hosted its first Grand Prix. And if there can be said to be a national side in Formula One, it has to be the Force India team.
Now, at Yas, India has unveiled the i1 Supercar Series, a five-circuit, 10-race series featuring some big F1 names past and present and a host of young Indian drivers which will have its last races in March at the Yas Marina Circuit.
The big idea, as Karun Chandhok, the F1 driver from Chennai, articulately explained, is that this is not F1. "The philosophy and ethos of the series is completely different. They're trying to be something completely different and they've gone out of the way to project that image."
What it will be is a proper demonstration of Indian muscle in the business of ideas. The series has signed on former F1 men in Jacques Villeneuve, Jean Alesi, Giancarlo Fisichella, Mika Salo, and the current drivers Chandhok and Vitantonio Liuzzi, among others, to race for nine Indian city-based teams, in Radical SR3 cars, in five venues across the world. Twenty-seven drivers have been signed up, three for each team, with at least one Indian presence.
Audacious is not the half of it (one team will have only female drivers), not when the series chief executive Darshan M began to rattle off his plans.
Darshan was involved with the Indian Premier League (IPL), the big cricket idea of the past decade, and the format here is replicated: each city team is privately owned, and plenty of the pizzazz of Bollywood and cricket will cross over.
Shahrukh Khan is involved, Sourav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh are expected to be, Sachin Tendulkar is the brand ambassador. This is not small-scale. "I was a part of the IPL and post the success, like everybody else, we said we need to try and create something like that because India's such a large country there is room for more than one sport to happen," Darshan said.
"So when we broke down the IPL and said what is the secret, if you remove all the fluff, down to the core content, it is primarily that quality cricket is being played and to that you add everything else.
"So we said if you add world-class racing, then add city loyalty, celebrity owners, glamour, glitz, the lifestyle, you can create something larger than life."
Darshan's corporate-speak ("Our customer feedback …" he said worryingly) is gradually becoming the voice of India sport; it is disconcerting to the old but transformative. The races have been meshed into our new, rushed existences. "We've created two 30-minute sprint races instead of one long race," Darshan said. "It's instant gratification.
"We all live in this era of headline generation: they read headlines, skip and go. Something like this, you're able to consume quickly, it happens fast, it's not a long boring race where you switch on, have a bath, lunch, come back and they're still going in circles."
His confidence, and that of the PR machine dutifully buzzing around, is notable even if some cynicism has to attach itself to how the finances might work (they're hoping to break even around the fourth season), or even Darshan's assertion that the new, young Indian is predisposed to motorsport over cricket.
And, unlike cricket, racing is not really in need of further glam; it is already a useful brochure for the high life. But, crucially, a broadcaster is al ready in place.
The races are in countries such as Bahrain, Malaysia and Qatar with large Indian expatriate markets to tap. And the wealth that celebrities can suck in means success should not be ruled out.
If, as Chandhok argued, racers such as Fisichella and Villeneuve enjoy the season and spread the word, if enough hype is generated (not usually a problem in India) to keep the corporates happy, then it can work.
And if it does, it is only inevitable that more quality Indian drivers will emerge. Chandhok said: "Yeah, it worked in cricket didn't it? The IPL uncovered a lot of hidden people and it can happen here."
The bigger idea behind all this, of course, is that India is not shy about coming out on the global sports stage. India and the English Premier League are flirting. Lionel Messi's Argentina played in Kolkata in September. Chennai is a long-standing ATP destination. There is a lucrative, private hockey league in the works. It cannot be long before major-level golf comes knocking.
It was left to Salo, the Finnish veteran, to sum up the bigness of it all. Asked whether he ever imagined he would be racing in an Indian-owned series, he smiled. "It is a pretty outrageous thing, yeah, completely different. I definitely didn't think it.
"When they first talked to me about it I was like 'Mmmm, OK …' a little bit skeptical. But now that we are here, it looks really good. A great idea."
