Somebody asks me this every few weeks, usually a parent, usually some version of "is the Indian F4 thing legitimate?"
It is. It's FIA-certified, it runs to the same technical rules as the F4 championships in Italy and Britain and Japan, and the lap times mean something outside the country. What follows is the whole picture: what the series is, who runs it, what you sit in, what it costs, who's won it, and where to watch.
What it actually is
Formula 4 is the FIA's first rung. You come out of karting, you go into F4, and it exists in roughly twenty national and regional flavours worldwide, all built to one set of technical regulations so a lap time in Chennai can be read against a lap time in Vallelunga.
India's version was announced in August 2021 by Mumbai Falcons and finally got on track in 2023. Racing Promotions Private Limited runs it, and they also run the Indian Racing League, which is why the two share a calendar under the Indian Racing Festival banner.
People mix those two up constantly, so: the Indian Racing League is a franchise competition, city-badged teams, four drivers per team including a mandated female driver. The F4 Indian Championship is a normal junior single-seater championship. One driver per car, points to the individual. Same weekends, same circuits, completely different things.
Everyone races the same thing: a Mygale M21-F4 chassis, an Alpine engine, JK Tyre rubber.
That wasn't the original plan. The 2022 announcement said Tatuus F4-T421 with Abarth power, and that combination never turned a wheel in India. By the time the series actually ran in 2023 it had switched to the Mygale and Alpine package that's still in use.
The FIA writes cost rules for F4 as well as technical ones. A car can't exceed 30,000 euros and a season isn't supposed to exceed 100,000. Those numbers land differently in India than anywhere else, for reasons we've gone into in what it costs to race in F4 here.
The 2026 season
Season four opened at Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore on 12 and 13 September, six rounds in total.
The big change is the ending. For the first time the title gets settled on a street circuit, at the new Navi Mumbai Street Circuit in December, where the Indian Racing League finishes too.
Aris Kyriakou walked away from the opening round with 51 points and three podiums from three races. Luviwe Sambudla won race one and sits second on 38. Aaron Mehta is third on 32. Team-by-team breakdown is in the 2026 grid guide.
The Indian Racing League joins in October, opening at the Madras International Circuit on the 24th and 25th, and then both championships converge on Navi Mumbai.
Three seasons, three champions, no Indians
Cooper Webster of Australia took the first title in 2023 with Chennai Turbo Riders. Aqil Alibhai of South Africa won it in 2024 with Hyderabad Blackbirds, six wins across the year, holding off Ruhaan Alva. Then Shane Chandaria of Kenya won it as a rookie in 2025, aged 15, which makes him the youngest champion the series has had.
That's a pattern and it isn't an accident. This is the cheapest FIA Formula 4 championship on the planet, and cheap seats attract talent from everywhere that's been priced out. We've argued the case for why that's good for Indian drivers rather than bad in a separate piece, and the full roll of honour, with what each champion did next, sits here.
On paper, a free seat in the next season of the Formula Regional Indian Championship.
There's a problem with that, and it's big enough that we gave it its own article. The Formula Regional Indian Championship was announced for 2022 and hasn't run a race yet.
Set the advertised prize aside and what a season here really buys is FIA superlicence points and a body of lap times in a spec car against a known field. For a junior driver that second thing is the currency. It's the only evidence a European team can actually read.
Two venues have carried most of the history. The Madras International Circuit near Chennai has hosted races since the first season. Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore joined in 2024 and has done the heavy lifting in 2026, taking both opening rounds.
Kari is 2.100 km, 15 turns, opened in 2003, FIA Grade 4. Ruhaan Alva's 1:06.386 from 2024 is the Formula 4 lap record there. The circuit's being resurfaced and stretched past 2.2 km, which will wipe every record in the book, and we've covered all of it in the Kari track guide.
Navi Mumbai is the unknown. December will be the first time single-seaters at this level run there, and what's confirmed so far is here.
In 2025 the championship streamed on TrillerTV+ and went out on Star Sports and JioHotstar in English, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil.
Check the 2026 arrangement before you build a weekend around it. Domestic motorsport rights in India change hands more often than they do in Europe, and last season's deal doesn't carry over by default. Session times and the full festival calendar live in our 2026 calendar and viewing guide.
Where it sits on the ladder
F4, then Formula Regional, then FIA Formula 3, then FIA Formula 2, then Formula 1. Nearly everyone on the current F1 grid went through some version of that, most of them doing their F4 year at 15 or 16.
For an Indian driver the climb has some specific complications, including fees, FMSCI licensing, and the uncomfortable question of whether to race at home or go to Europe. That's all in how to become a racing driver in India. If you'd rather just understand how the categories differ mechanically, start with F4 vs F3 vs F2 vs F1.
And if what you're really asking is whether any of this ends with an Indian on the Formula 1 grid, the history and the current state of the pipeline are in Indian drivers in Formula 1.
