Mallya with Sachin Tendulkar, who is an F1 fan, and his wife Anjali

London, July 19: Work on building a fully fledged F1 motor racing circuit outside Delhi will begin soon — and in time for the country to host the 2010 Indian Grand Prix, Vijay Mallya, co-owner of the Force India team, has confirmed.

Although his team has not achieved the success it was looking for this season, the ever-optimistic Mallya indicated the force is still with him — and with India.

“The news is quite positive,” he insisted.

The UB Group and Kingfisher Airlines boss disclosed: “I happened to have lunch with the CEO of one of India’s biggest banks and he confirmed they had sanctioned a facility to the developer of the Indian track. He has actually bought the land and on October 1 construction of a brand new track will begin.”

“So for the first time now I feel very confident to be able to say to you there will be a brand new track and we will have our first grand prix in 2010,” he added.

Mallya and the Mol family from The Netherlands bought the Spyker F1 team for 88 million euros. The team changed its name to Force India F1 for the 2008 season.

“As you know, I inherited a team that was not very competitive in previous years,” Mallya told an agency in an interview conducted in Hockenheim, where the German Grand Prix is being held.

“F1 has become a lot more competitive in 2008,” he said. “You are fighting for fractions of a second and in this context we have improved. We have, at least, shown to ourselves, and to our fans in India, we are capable of improvement.”

He himself posed the fundamental issue: “Obviously, the question is, have we improved enough to score any points?”

And he gave the reply: “All I can say is, we have given it all we reasonably could for 2008 and we have only one more element of development to come which is a seamless shift gearbox which we hope to introduce for Hungary. Beyond that I have decided we will now concentrate on the 2009 car. Hungary is the last stop for us in terms of development for 2008 and then all the focus is on 2009 when we sure hope to score some points.”

He intends putting his money where his drivers will have their feet. “We have an increased budget for 2009, and as far as the human resources are concerned, we have added two senior engineers to our design team,” Mallya disclosed. “We will add as many as we need to.”

He also said: “We now have three wind tunnels running — one of our own and two that are leased facilities — so we are giving it all we can. When you have to compete with teams with significantly higher budgets and vast resources, you have to at least step up to the plate, otherwise you won’t get anywhere.”