Chirag Malhotra gets ready to burn rubber and (below) at the wheel of a Formula Renault 2.0

A Calcutta boy is revving up for his Formula racing debut in the UK, coinciding with the first-ever F1 event on Indian soil this October.

Chirag Malhotra, 20, will take the wheel of a Formula Renault 2.0 at the Winter Cup 2011 as the only Indian in a championship that helped Flying Finn Kimi Raikkonen vault straight from the winners’ podium to the F1 pit.

It has been a speedy climb for Chirag as well, having first held the steering of anything remotely resembling a racing machine — a go-kart at the now-defunct Clown Town, off Garia — barely eight years ago.

As he stands at the cusp of what could be his biggest career opportunity, Chirag can’t stop raving about what it means to burn rubber on a Formula racetrack. He had his first test session on the Formula Renault 2.0, manufactured by Renault Sport UK, at the famous Silverstone circuit on August 12.

“It was a dream come true.... We finished the day 0.8 seconds behind the fastest car. A good performance for the first day,” he told Metro in an email from the UK, where he is studying motorsport technology at the University of Hertfordshire.

Brett Parris of Antel Motorsport, the team for which Chirag will be driving in the Formula Renault Winter Cup, gave a glowing testimonial. “On his first day in the car, Chirag lapped just 1.1 seconds slower than Koroush Khani, who is a proven race winner in Formula Renault. We have not had many drivers before come this close to the pace so quickly.”

Chirag’s need for speed was first fuelled by a trip to Legoland, at Windsor in England, when he was still a kid. The toy go-kart he saw there led him to try a real one at Clown Town and he was hooked for life.

“I later went to see my cousins taking part in a regional karting championship and decided to participate. I ended up winning the championship after starting at the back,” Chirag recounted.

With winning becoming a habit for Chirag, parents Pankaj and Megha Malhotra thought he deserved a chance to explore racing outside the city. “My parents agreed to send me to Malaysia to Wai Leong, who is a popular driver and coach. He also runs the city karting enterprise in Malaysia,” Chirag said.

The training stint was the turning point in Chirag’s career. In 2006, the then 15-year-old competed in his first major championship, the Rotax Max Challenge. “I drove a Rotax Junior Max with a rental arrow chassis. Even though we had limited budgets and the sport is very expensive, we still managed to get three podiums (finishes) and two poles (positions) out of five races,” he recalled.

The level of talent at these events is high, especially in the senior category with names like Armaan Ebrahim, who is now in Formula 2, and Aditya Patel, who is racing in the Volkswagen Scirocco Cup.

In 2009 came Chirag’s big break, when he was picked up by Red Rooster Racing to race for them in the JK Tyre National Racing Championship. He drove a Formula Rolon, which was then India’s most advanced single-seater racecar with a Chevrolet engine that produced close to 130HP.

Chirag’s current sponsor is Navitas, an educational services provider. He hopes the Formula Renault Winter Cup will lead him to greater things, just as it did for Raikkonen and fellow F1 champion Lewis Hamilton.

For now, just getting to Silverstone is as good as a podium finish and enough to do hometown Calcutta proud.