Someone who has witnessed the frenzy and fascination around a Formula 1 race in India, it pains Karun Chandhok to see that interest in motorsport in the country has declined drastically.

Not only the high-profile sport exited the country due to varied reasons, the agonising wait to see the next Indian in Formula 1 after Narain Karthikeyan and Chandhok continues. “Honestly it’s been a bit of a disappointment, a bit of a shame about how much the interest has gone down actually. “That period around 2008 to 2013 we had two Indians in F1, we had a team in F1, we had a race [Indian GP] and the interest was amazing. You can’t imagine that these days,” Chandhok said in an interview on the sidelines of the Formula E season finale in London.