The First Innings: Prithviraj Siddappa On Marque's Latest Chapter

VW motorsport india boss prithviraj siddappa on the marque’s latest chapter

Volkswagen’s involvement in motorsport in India since 2010 has easily been one of the most significant turning points for the sport in the country. In many ways the timing was ideal as well as the point of no return for hosting an F1 race from 2011 had been reached that year. So the involvement by a major international automotive company to agree to have a dedicated motorsport division in India showed confidence at what the construction of an F1 grade circuit that hosts a Grand Prix could do both for India as well as for Volkswagen.

A motorsport program that started out with just a one-make series featuring VW Polos now also includes teaming up with ‘customer’ racers who will buy a car from the company and with VW’s help will take the cars rallying and racing. An upgraded version of VW’s Polo Rally car is currently being tested by Malaysian rally legend Karamjit Singh in the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC).

VW Motorsport India boss Prithviraj Siddappa sat down with autoX to take stock of what he has seen in his tenure, which would have ended after the final round of the INRC in Chikmagalur.

“Rallying definitely wasn’t something we had planned on getting into,” said Siddappa. “The idea of providing cars and some support to customer teams was brought to us by Sirish (Chandran) and it played well with VW Motorsport in Germany too.

“However we don’t plan on having a full factory team as yet as there really aren’t any other manufacturers out there who are competing even though we are definitely open to it.”

The other major aspect of VW’s time in India has been its partnership with JK Tyre. Serious discussions had started as far back as 2008, with JK Tyre motorsport boss Sanjay Sharma making trips to Germany to meet with company representatives. Siddappa acknowledged the importance of their relationship with one of the ‘usual suspects’ of Indian motorsport.

“We were lucky to have found a partnership with JK Tyre who pretty much held our hand when we first came here,” said Siddappa.

The partnership has now grown to the point that VW sees it fit to place the champion of the Polo R Cup in the JK Racing India Series that features Formula BMW cars so that they can be better prepared to race tin tops in Europe than the previous winners who graduated to the Scirocco R Cup.

“We can clearly see that the winners of the Polo R Cup are nowhere compared to the Europeans,” said Siddappa. “So JK have a great formula racing series here which we believe will give drivers proper seat time and experience in a car with high power-to-weight ratio.”

Success, like most things in India, is expected to come slowly but even with Siddappa’s departure, it looks like VW is in it for the long haul.