It's great to see young racers be free to compete where they like

There has been a very welcome development in Indian single-seat racing.

It’s no secret that there are things to be critical about in Indian motorsport, and that there are people with no desire to conceal those criticisms. More often than not positive aspects of Indian motorsport come to light when participants venture abroad to take on those from traditional motorsport hubs that produce very well-prepared machines and individuals.

But there’s one recent development that I am extremely happy to see in domestic motorsport, and it involves long-standing rivals – MRF Tyres and JK Tyre. Or rather those whom they claim to benefit – young racing drivers who want nothing more than to just race regardless of which tyre company’s sticker is on the side of their single-seat, open-wheel car. And it seems that discouraging young racing drivers from participating in a series sponsored by the other is something that JK Tyre and MRF seem to have done away with.

Through the national racing championships that they respectively back, MRF and JK have tried to carve out their independent identity in Indian motorsport.
Each have claimed to be better than the other in one aspect or the other, and this had led to an unsavoury approach when it comes to their single seat racing series. In the case of JK Tyre, the Euro JK car (based on the former Formula BMW Pacific car) is fielded in their blue-riband series, and drivers who come from karting and the rightfully maligned LGB series into the far more advanced car are seen as products of JK Tyre’s grassroots approach.

The MRF-backed MMSC National Racing Championship fields the Formula 1600 car that is the closest single-seat series to the Euro JK, with the Formula 2000 car way ahead in terms of tech and pace. Some would argue that F2000 is not particularly relevant to Indian drivers, as MRF seems keen to position the series as a winter racing series, where young drivers from Europe go to stay active, while their homeland stays snowed under. But I digress.

Both MRF and JK used to actively discourage drivers from competing in the rival series, particularly after a plan to run their racing series under a unified banner in 2013 fell through and resulted in National Racing Championship status being stripped from JK Tyre and transferred to the MMSC. It took a while and many instances of drivers from one series seemingly being given the short end of the stick in the other, but there finally seems to be a thaw.

Yash Aradhya, Raghul Rangasamy, Anindith Reddy Konda and Karthik Tharani Singh are examples of drivers who are appearing in both series now and being competitive as well.

This means more seat time for the drivers, and despite having just three race tracks to race at, more seat time equals more scope for improvement as a racing driver. It also means the potential for finding sponsors – as hard as that is to do in India – as drivers can go to companies showing a full calendar of racing and media coverage that spans the web, television and mainstream and niche print media.

In theory, it could work, and possibly in reality too, as long as JK and MRF realise that behaving like jilted lovers may work for them, but having drivers suffer on account of it is not kosher, so to speak. With decent machinery, racing series in India can most definitely be positioned as distinctly Indian, tailor made for Indian enthusiasts and fans, much like Brazil’s stock car racing series. So long as drivers can just ‘shut up and race.’