Ajith Kumar is currently in the middle of his most ambitious motorsport season yet, competing in the 2026 Michelin Le Mans Cup in the LMP3 Pro/Am class with Team Virage alongside Narain Karthikeyan, India’s first and only Formula 1 driver. The Tamil superstar, who has appeared in over 60 films and has been listed three times on the Forbes Indian Celebrity 100, has 14 confirmed race events scheduled between March 2026 and January 2027 across nine countries and three continents, a racing calendar so dense that it has effectively pushed his next film, tentatively titled AK64, into an uncertain production timeline.
The season has already taken Kumar from the Mugello Circuit in Italy in March through Barcelona in April and Le Castellet in France in May, with the Road to Le Mans support race at the Circuit de la Sarthe completed on June 12. The remaining calendar includes Imola in July, Spa-Francorchamps in August, Silverstone in September, Portimao in October, followed by the Asian Le Mans Series rounds at Yas Marina and Dubai Autodrome in November and Sepang in January 2027. Each race weekend demands travel, practice sessions, qualifying, and the race itself, leaving Kumar with limited consecutive weeks for film production.
Kumar and Karthikeyan drive the #8 Ligier JS P325 LMP3 prototype for Team Virage, with Julian Gerbi completing the driver lineup for the Asian Le Mans rounds. The partnership between Kumar and Karthikeyan represents something unprecedented in Indian sport: a Tamil cinema icon and a former F1 driver sharing the cockpit in international endurance racing. Kumar’s racing credentials are not ceremonial. He began competing in the early 2000s in the Formula Asia BMW Championship and Formula 2, built his own racing team, and secured a P2 podium finish at Spa-Francorchamps in April 2025, his third significant result within four months after a third-place finish at the 24H Dubai 2025 and a similar result at the 12H Mugello.
His ambitions extend well beyond the current LMP3 category. In an interview at the Asian Le Mans Series round in Abu Dhabi, Kumar stated that his ultimate goal is the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the most prestigious endurance race in the world. He outlined a progression from LMP3 through LMP2 and eventually into the Hypercar category once customer racing options become available, a path that would place him alongside actors Paul Newman, Patrick Dempsey, and Michael Fassbender as performers who competed at the highest levels of international motorsport.
The cost of this racing commitment to Kumar’s film career is becoming a subject of industry discussion. AK64, his next film with Good Bad Ugly director Adhik Ravichandran, was originally scheduled to begin shooting in February 2026. That start date passed without cameras rolling. The production also changed hands after budget disputes reportedly caused Mythri Movie Makers to exit, with Vels International stepping in as producer. The most realistic near-term shooting window falls between mid-October and mid-November 2026, approximately five weeks between the Portimao finale and the first Asian Le Mans round at Yas Marina. Any longer shoot would push the film into 2027 production territory.
Kumar’s willingness to prioritize racing over an immediate return to cinema sets him apart from every other major star in the Indian film industry. While contemporaries like Chiyaan Vikram are launching new projects and younger stars like Sivakarthikeyan are moving between films at a rapid pace, Kumar at 54 is spending his weekends at circuits across Europe and the Middle East, competing against professional racing drivers rather than calculating box office windows. The commercial logic that typically governs a Tamil superstar’s calendar does not apply here, and Kumar appears untroubled by the gap.
The 54-year-old’s racing operation has become increasingly professional. Ajith Kumar Racing partners with Bas Koeten Racing for technical and logistical support, and the team competes across the Creventic European Series, the Michelin Le Mans Cup, and the Asian Le Mans Series simultaneously. That three-series commitment is unusual even among dedicated gentleman drivers, and it reflects a level of investment, both financial and personal, that goes well beyond a celebrity hobby. Kumar trains extensively between races, maintaining the physical conditioning that endurance racing demands alongside the specific skills of prototype driving.
For Tamil cinema fans waiting for AK64, the situation requires patience that the industry rarely demands of a star’s audience. Even Rajinikanth’s delayed projects typically have clearer production timelines than what Kumar’s racing schedule currently permits. Whether Kumar can sustain both careers at this intensity, racing competitively enough to be taken seriously in the paddock while delivering the kind of film performance his audience expects, remains the defining question of this phase of his career. His answer, for now, is to keep racing.
