Arshi Gupta (special arrangement) NEW DELHI: At the age of seven, when most kids are generally busy inventing their favorite cartoons or playground games, Arshi Gupta has already discovered her new obsession: speed. At seven years, five months and 18 days, she became the youngest rider to receive a racing license, which put her in the Indian record books and quietly signaled that something unusual was afoot in the narrow lanes of Faridabad.“When she was young, maybe 3 or 4, we noticed that she liked speed and had good control over it,” her father Anchit Gupta told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interaction. “When she drove her toy cars or tricycles around our house, we noticed that she had good control and a speed that she loved.”
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This love of speed has now taken her to one of motorsport’s biggest stages.Last week, Arshi, now 9, became the youngest driver ever to be selected for the F1 Academy Discover Your Drive (DYD) program, a global initiative designed to identify and support young female racing talent.
Talk about speed
Long before professional go-karts and international circuits, there were toy cars and tricycles. Anchit, a Formula 1 fan who never imagined racing professionally himself, saw something else in his daughter’s fearlessness.He was looking for a place where the kid could legally drive. This search led him to a small go-kart track in Gurgaon.“She started going there every week and within five months she became one of the fastest on the track,” he recalled.
Arshi Gupta (special arrangement)
The owner of the track, former Formula 4 racer Rohit Khanna, suggested that she experience professional racing conditions.By the end of 2023, Arshi had first-hand experience with a proper racing team.“Rohit told me that he was taking his team to Bangalore for a test program and he would like Arshi to join the team and just try professional cars and see if she likes it or not. That’s how it started,” her father added.However, who knew at the time that it would become a journey requiring the crossing of borders, continents and countless logistical barriers.
Racing without a system
By any conventional measure, India is not the place where Formula 1 dreams should begin. There is no grassroots ladder, no dense race calendar, no thriving junior pipeline. It is no accident that India has failed to produce a single top level competitor till date.“The biggest challenge was the fact that there really is no motorsport ecosystem in North India,” Anchit said bluntly. “Even if you go to Bangalore, Chennai, the ecosystem is nothing compared to what we see in the UAE, Europe or the UK.”When Arshi started training, India had only one professional go-kart track. Traveling from Delhi to Bangalore for practice was as difficult as a flight to the Middle East. So the family chose the latter.Between October 2024 and February 2025, Arshi was based in the United Arab Emirates and raced in the IAME Series and Rotax Max Challenge.
Arshi Gupta (special arrangement)
She took her first podium in January 2025 and consistently finished in the top ten against seasoned international competitors.“That gave us confidence,” added Anchit. “So we spoke to various people in the industry and were told that the training in the UK is the best. The UK has some of the best drivers in the world.”This was followed by seven weeks of training in Britain before she returned to India to compete in the National Karting Championship. She won it, becoming the only female national go-kart champion in Asia and the youngest champion among boys and girls.
Breakthrough F1 Academy
In January 2026, Arshi’s racing resume was submitted to the F1 Academy selection committee. The process is competitive, divided into age categories and designed to support only a handful of girls worldwide each year.“She was chosen,” Anchit said with some palpable pride. “Being part of the Formula 1 Academy pilot program will give her the right platform and the right guidance.”It goes without saying that she is the only Indian kart license holder in the cohort.Through the DYD programme, Arshi will be supported in the British Champions of the Future Academy program where she will compete in four rounds in the UK against some of the strongest junior riders in the world.
Life off the rails
The romance of motorsport often hides the grind. For Arshi, childhood was a blur of airports, highways and homework crammed between bikes.“There are a lot of struggles when it comes to travel, late nights, early morning flights,” Anchit admitted. “But that didn’t deter her at all.According to her father, she raced on weekends followed by five-hour drives to the next circuit, took meals in transit and slept in the back of the car.“She would eat anything she could get in the car, sleep in the back of the car and study,” he said. “She’s an A plus student. She’d learn on the fly, she’d learn on the runway, but we’ve never seen her complain.”
Arshi Gupta (special arrangement)
Really the only complaint comes when it’s not racing. “If you’re in India and we don’t take her anywhere on the track, that’s a complaint for her,” laughed Anchit. “He says, ‘Why aren’t we on the right track?’Behind Arshi’s rise is a small, tight-knit family unit. Anchit works in renewable energy investments; her mother, Deepti Gupta, is a doctor. Her younger sister completes the quartet.Her school, DPS Faridabad, adjusted its timetables and exams around her routes.“We made it clear to her that you cannot compromise on your studies,” revealed Anchit. “She learned to prioritize and manage time.Arshi Gupta’s rise is not just a feel-good story; it is perhaps a critique of the structural vacuum of Indian motorsport.READ ALSO: World Champion at age 7 at her first international event; ‘nervous’ to meet PM Modi: How Pragnika Lakshmi became a chess prodigyHer journey involved moving to the UAE and UK, competing abroad and building a global network before the age of ten.Yet as she prepares to race in Britain this year, supported by the F1 Academy and competing against the world’s best juniors, her story speaks volumes for what Indian talent can achieve if given the help it needs.
