Maruti Suzuki Autocross Report by Anamit Sen

Anamit Sen goes to Greater Noida to catch a day of fun and frolic with fast, noisy cars. So, we have just had a very good (by all accounts) first Indian GP at the BIC and Narain Karthikeyan not only became the first Indian to participate in the first F1 race in India but also finished the race ahead of Daniel Ricciardo who replaced him mid-way through the season. The question remains though – what after F1? There is this hope in a lot of people that the Indian GP will spur a lot of interest in motorsport though one doubts one will be able to get away from reading about cricket all the time. The major reason is that there is no infrastructure in place to develop young talent so what can people interested in motorsport do about it? A good idea would have been to develop a karting centre in each capital city, have a zonal karting championship from where the winners would go on to participate in an interzonal national championship.

The main thing about motor racing is that it requires a track as does karting. Fortunately though, there ARE other very simple ways to get one’s adrenaline pumping – like drag racing, autocrosses and rallycrosses. Down South and in Bombay too sporadic drag races are held but then drag races get over in a matter of seconds which is not very spectator friendly. So the best thing to do it would appear is to have an autocross. Autocrosses are all about beating the clock so one is always challenging one’s self. The easiest autocross event is the one in which one simply heads for an empty disused fields somebody’s private land, and makes a track using a few diggers and bulldozers! The other and even easier is to run an event around a large parking lot, like what one usually sees attached to a mall. No diggers or bulldozers required here, just a few cones and miles of tape. This latter event is what Maruti Suzuki has chosen to support and thus the event is known as the Maruti Suzuki Autocross and it is organised by Northern Motorsport in Noida on it’s behalf.

The venue was the parking lot of the Expo grounds in Greater Noida where a circuit had been marked out on the parking lot with plastic cones and miles of tape. The parking lot is L-shaped and this allows for a lot of different track layouts. Since the inaugural event the autocross has been growing in popularity and the 2011 version proved so popular that the organisers had to run 500 races in one day (Saturday) just to get through qualifying and separate the wheat from the chaff, the racing spilling into darkness. Competitors participated in several different classes and many tried to better their chances of success by participating in more than one class. The classes were divided into amateur and pro and further divided into stock and modified. These were further subdivided into engine categories, ladies categories and open categories. The event was scheduled to start at 7AM in the morning but dense fog put paid to that idea. The first half of the day was given to running the semi finals and quarter finals in some classes to determine the finalists. But first, the competitors walked around the track to see the layout which had been changed from the previous day. There were some well known local names participating, people with track as well as INRC experience like Sunny Sidhu, Phil Mathai, Bobbie Bhogal and Randeep Miglani in the pro categories and doctors and lawyers in the amateur category.

Although it was sponsored by Maruti Suzuki, the choice of cars was free so while there was a plethora of (outdated) Maruti machinery (Gypsys, Zens and Esteems) there were also cars like a Chevrolet Spark, a BMW 320D, a Hyundai Getz and even a Mahindra Scorpio. In fact, the paddock exposed the state of motorsport in India today – most of the drivers were competing in cars that are not produced anymore today. However the spirit of the event more than made up for it.

After the semi-finals had concluded, lunch was declared and the competitors went away. On their return they found the organisers had been hard at work and track had metamorphosed into a very fast layout with a number of straights and U turns in addition to a few bottom gear turns. The driving began in earnest now and barring a few embarrassing moments like missing the apex and straddling the small but wide concrete piles that dotted the parking lot as well as misreading a few of the hairpin turns, the event was incident and accident free. The day ended with a fun race where a few of the pro class drivers went out and raced each other instead of the clock.

The different class winners of the day included Phil Mathai, Sunny Sidhu, Amanpreet Ahluwalia and Bobbie Bhogal which was largely as per expectations. However for the amateurs it was a day well spent, involved and immersed in motorsport as it were and the common consensus was that more events like these should be organised as these events only serve to spot and nurture talent in a rather inexpensive, time-effective manner in a fun way. Is anybody listening out there??