Indian GP aims for cheap tickets and tight security

Organizers of the inaugural Indian Grand Prix have vowed to offer affordable tickets and a secure location as Formula 1 heads to the country for the first time next year. The venue, 35 kilometers (22 miles) outside capital city New Delhi, is currently under construction by industrial conglomerate Jaypee Group.

With 19 races on the 2010 schedule, matching the highest ever figure from 2005, F1 is set to hit the 20 mark next year, with Grands Prix in Russia and the United States also on the cards. For India's debut, Mark Hughes has also said that JPSK Sports, a Jaypee subsidiary company, is about to send out tenders for track asphalting to start later this year, once the monsoon season is over.

"We are looking at the range of tickets for the high end of cricket games, the international test matches, the IPL games," the firm's Vice President explained to The Times of India. "We are looking at the ticketing for the Commonwealth Games and we are also looking at the other races and trying to find a balance.

"There will be a reasonably affordable general admission and there will probably be about 25,000 general tickets. I'd like to think that we can make it affordable in the same way that Malaysia did - Malaysia have a very good, affordable entry ticket price."

Hughes added that high security measures will also be taken for the first F1 event in the country. "We will have things like built-in underground scanners, so when a car drives in every vehicle will get scanned," he continued. "At the same time, we will look at how we integrate that with the CCTV systems.

"We will have a reasonably sophisticated ticketing system that will be very difficult to forge. There will be a turnstile system at every entrance, every ticket will be electronic. Security will be ramped up, it has to be."