A start to the racing career with a lot of challenges, but we prevail
Racing has always been a far-fetched dream, and when I got old enough to understand, it was too late to be a professional racer. But after getting selected for Round 1 of the TVS YMRP (Young Media Racer’s Program), the dream was rekindled.
Practice Makes You Perfect
June 7, 2025, it’s practice time. Riders get a set amount of time to go onto the track and get familiar with the layout once again. We get to set our reference points for initiating the turns and get used to the speed of the motorcycle.
Having practice cut short was a bummer, but after we got to know that a rider had crashed and had some debris on the track, we were just hoping that he would be safe. With wrong body positioning and bad lines, I was neither the quickest nor the fastest rider on the track. But things were not over, and we still had our qualifications for the race coming up in a few hours.
Good Things Fall Apart
The adrenaline was pumping high, focus was locked, and it was time to go onto the racetrack to put out our fastest laps to qualify and set our grid positions for the race. I figured out that if I just followed the racing lines of the fastest riders in our group, my timing would get better. While that proved to be the right decision, it also caused a mishap and ended up with me having a crash.
With a sweet first lap out of the five we got for qualifying, I was looking up to the second lap, and suddenly, on a sharp right-hander, one of the race leaders goes off the track a tad bit due to overshooting the corner entry speed. He did manage to get himself back, but due to target fixation, I couldn’t. After going, quite literally, off-road, I tumbled off the bike. While there wasn’t a scratch on me due to the safety protocols being followed by TVS before entering the track, the bike had faced more than a few scratches. As I was running high on adrenaline, I wanted to get back on the track as soon as possible to finish my qualifying round, so I picked up the bike. But it refused to start, as the gear shifter was completely obliterated. That marked the end of my qualification round.
Thanks to the only decent lap I had in my bag, I managed to qualify P7 and was able to race the following day. The dream lived on.
Time To Go Racing
It’s race day, and I was finally going to race! If someone had told the 12-year-old me that you would be racing motorcycles on a track, he wouldn’t have believed it. We were given a final briefing before the actual race began. My bike was ready with a new gear shifter, and off we went for the formation lap.
Disaster Strikes
It’s the formation lap. I noticed a major, major issue with my bike. The 5-speed race-spec TVS Apache RTR 200 4V suddenly had a mechanical issue and was not able to shift into 5th gear! Then came a moment where I had to make a split-second decision, whether to go back into the pits, for the bike was not shifting into 5th gear, or go out with 4 gears and give my best. It was the former that happened, and the race was on.
The lights were out, and I immediately dropped a position due to a mediocre launch. But as the first lap went on, I immediately gained 3 positions and stayed P5 for three more laps. While I was doing my best with all 4 gears I had, competition caught up with me. It was on the last lap that my fellow journalists who were racing alongside caught up with me, and I went down 2 positions. The race was over, started P7 and ended P7, while no positions were gained or lost, what I gained was more than just better race timings, it was experience.
The Learnings
I had improved my timings over 4 seconds when compared to the selection round, was way more self-confident, and my trust in the bike’s capability just grew as each lap passed by. I look up to the second round where I aim to make a mark and at least get into the top 5 to not only improve my skills but also my position in this overall media championship.
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