F1
Learn about how the Mumbai-born racecar driver rose through the ranks from his first karting experience to being on the verge of securing an F1 seat.
As the only Indian in the Formula 2 series currently, Jehan Daruvala is the latest posterboy of Indian motor racing.
The 23-year-old Red Bull junior driver is currently ranked fifth in the championships. He raised hopes of breaking into the top tier of the sport, Formula 1, when he earned a test with McLaren in June this year.
Having burst onto the scene as a prodigious teenager, it has taken Jehan over a decade of hard-work and meticulous planning to get where he is. We re-trace the Mumbai racer’s steps to make some sense of the vast, competitive world of international motorsport.
First experience in motorsport
Jehan’s first brush with the sport was in 2007, when he was too small to even fit in a go-kart.
“They had to put two pillows behind me so my feet could reach the pedals,” he recalls. “It was just something I liked doing, never took much interest. I used to watch F1 on TV from maybe 2005-06, when (Fernando) Alonso was winning with Renault.”
For a young Jehan, F1 was a far-fetched dream, and one that was put on the back-burner because his family thought there was very little scope for racing in India.
Mentorship of Rayomand Banajee
It was through sheer luck that Jehan set on this path.
“My father (Khurshed) usually never reads the newspaper on the plane,” says Jehan. “But once when he was travelling back to Mumbai, he picked up the newspaper and saw that Rayomand Banajee was holding this training camp in Powai for young karters. He asked me if I wanted to do this and I said, ‘Sure.’ The camp was on the weekend, and on Monday I had an English exam.”
Rayomand is one of the stalwarts of the motorsports scene in India having won the national karting championship eight times and now one of the best-known karting trainers in the country. He was quick to spot Jehan’s talent and offered him a spot on his national team Rayo Racing. Jehan started racing in 2009, at the age of 11.
“He had done it all before,” Jehan says of Banajee. “His advice was the best that I had at the time. We used to race around India and Asia, carry our go-karts from India to different Asian countries, because we were on a budget. We didn’t have a separate go-kart for those championships abroad. So we would wrap our go-karts in cardboard and take them on the plane. And we’d take our mechanics from India too.
“I remember when I was in Hyderabad, the track was right next to the airport and the parking lot. I was staying in the dorm there, in a room with 20 people. My bag was below my bed. It was good. I was living it rough. Since then, Rayomand is still my mentor. He’s not there to tell me what to do anymore or guide me in my career path, but he is there to motivate me.”
Along with Jehan’s family, Banajee also travelled to the UK when Jehan completed the F1 test with McLaren in June.
Winning the One in a Billion talent hunt
Jehan’s career took an exciting turn when he was declared one of the three winners of the ‘One in a Billion’ hunt, which was organised by the now-defunct Force India F1 team, in 2011.
The talent hunt was meant for drivers between the age of 14 and 18. But the organisers made space for one driver below 14 and one above 18 in their top-100. Jehan, 13 at the time, was the fastest among the 8000 or so under-14 hopefuls to earn the spot.
“The 100 of us went to Goa,” he recalls. “Then it went from 100 to 50 to 25 to 10 over a week in Goa. Ten of us then went to UK and we met Anthony Hamilton, Niko Hulkenberg; they were our judges. It was supposed to be a ‘One in a Billion’ hunt. But because three of us were so close – Arjun (Maini), Tarun (Reddy) and me – they couldn’t really choose, so all three of us were declared the winners.”
Competing in British and European karting championships
Winning the ‘One in a Billion’ hunt not only kick-started his career, but also took him to the UK, one of the hubs of motor racing.
“It was big part of my success because they (Force India academy) put us in top racing teams,” says Jehan. “In 2012, I moved to UK. We started racing in the UK Championships.”
From 2013 onwards, Jehan was the only Indian driver in the academy. He was racing in the UK national championships at the time with a team called Racing Point.
“I remember it was the British Championships again and I was doing some European races,” he says. “They told me if I had to stay on in the programme, I had to win the championship, even before it started. There was a lot of pressure. My teammate was Dan Ticktum. I beat him by two points. The championship was decided in the last race. I just about beat him at the end. And I stayed at Force India for the whole time until the ownership changed.”
Even though motorsport is developing in India, Jehan believes that the move to Europe early in his career was pivotal and widened his horizons. It not only prepared him for the physicality of the sport but also for the cut-throat competition.
“When I karted in India, I was competitive, I was winning. Same in Asia,” he says. “When I went to Europe, it was a culture shock. People there are ruthless. Its 100 people in a race and everyone is at war; the last man survives.
“I remember in my first race. The goal was just to qualify for the final 30 (from 120 participants). That was how competitive it was. In order to win, you automatically build yourself up. You get tough. And then over a period of time, I won the British Championships and came third in the World Championships. It takes a lot of effort. I was doing 125 days of karting in a single season. That’s being in a kart once every three days.”
While studies took a backseat, Jehan had to make sure he still had a formal education to fall back on. He would study at airports, in planes, take online classes to make sure he passed all his exams and eventually earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree.
First steps in single-seater racing with Formula Renault
Jehan started racing in the Formula Renault 2.0 NEC (Northern European Cup) championships with Fortec Motorsport from 2015. It was his first foray into single-seater racing and the Indian driver spent two years honing his skills.
“Formula Renault is not like a go-kart but it’s a car which has less downforce,” he says. “It slides around a lot. The tyres are not anything like we have now; you can just keep driving and they don’t go off. Our tyres now, we drive one lap and they are finished. It’s a completely different ballgame. But it is good. Because the tyres last so you have a lot of laps to keep learning and developing.”
In his first year, Jehan had three podium finishes and finished fourth in the NEC. He scored his first NEC win at the Hungaroring, Hungary in 2016, during his second season in the championship.
Jehan believes the lower categories of Formula racing are the building blocks of the sport, and says that youngsters should invest as much time as they can to make the most of it.
“The best advice for young drivers is that if you have the money, you spend it in testing as much as you can,” he says. “The problem now is that from F3 onwards, they have a ban on testing. You can only test for six days a year. You are only allowed official testing and race events. That means from F3 all the way to F1, you don’t really drive apart from race weekends.”
Formula 3
Jehan spent a total of three years competing in the Formula 3 class; his first two years were in the European Formula 3 and then one year in the inaugural 2019 FIA Formula 3 Championship.
“In my first year in F3, I came sixth,” he recalls. “The second year in F3 I was again with Carlin but we struggled a lot. We had six guys in the team, I was the best among them but we only came 10th. The year after that I moved to Prema (Powerteam) and did my third season in F3 and was fighting for the championship all through the season. Until the last round. That season was successful and the main reason why I joined Red Bull.”
The Indian continued on the learning curve and picked up some important lessons as a driver in his three years in F3.
“The smaller cars don’t have as much downforce, so you can follow a lot easier,” he says. “There is more scope for overtaking. You learn your skill of driving close to cars, overtaking, all of that in the lower categories. When you come to the higher categories, like now I’m in F2, it is difficult to follow cars because there is a lot of downforce and overtaking becomes difficult.”
Formula 2
Following an impressive stint in F3, Jehan had a conversation with Dr Helmut Marko after the final race in Sochi in 2019. That led to him signing on as a member of the Red Bull Junior Team.
He began his F2 stint with Carlin in 2020. In his rookie season, Jehan won the sprint race in Bahrain, had a total of two podium finishes and was placed 12th in the driver standings. He improved to a seventh-place finish in 2021 with two wins and three podiums.
The Indian reunited with Prema for his third season in F2 in 2022. With podium finishes on the first three race weekends in 2022, he had an encouraging start to the season.
Formula 1 test runs
Jehan re-ignited hopes of seeing an Indian back in Formula 1 when he completed a test run with McLaren in June 2022. He completed 130 laps, over two days, at the Silverstone Circuit in McLaren’s 2021 race-winning challenger – the MCL35M.
“The first two laps I felt a lot of power in the car but after that it was like any other car,” he says. “When you start driving, the car feels most natural when you are pushing it to the limit. That’s how they are meant to be driven. To be honest, I felt very comfortable straight away. I didn’t feel like I was out of place at all. I felt like I deserve to be there.”
He may have to wait in the wings a little longer, but Jehan is determined to stay on track and fulfil his childhood dream of becoming an F1 driver.
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