TVS Young Media Racing Championship 2022 Round 3: How Deep Is Your Fear?

My heart is pounding, I can feel the nervousness in my stomach. As the minivan rolls past the gates to the Madras International Circuit, the sound of two very loud race bikes slips past my headphones, and I whisper to myself, “Damn, it’s time!” And time it was, for the last dance, the last round of this year’s TVS Petronas Young Media Racing Program. Status: I’m leading in the championship, I can see the crown, but it’s not time yet. There’s still one hurdle, one more exploration of the unknown.

In Round 2, I was facing my past failures at this very track masquerading as self doubt. To make matters worse, I was defending my win at the Kari Motor Speedway. I had to put on a good fight, I was not going down as a one-hit-wonder, I was not ending up as the Michael Buble of the motorcycle journalism fraternity. But this damn Karan Singh, and his annoying habit of getting in my way. He’s like a mosquito you just can’t swat, but I admired that the most about him too, he’s resilient. This dude is a total Kamikaze, all-or-nothing type! And he made sure he came for me in round 3 too, obviously!

Last race, both Karan and I wanted that top step badly, but he’d found a way to go a step ahead of his fear. Between practice and qualifying, he’d found seven seconds of pace and started at pole with a time of 2:21:270. I started the race just behind him, with the intent of just going for it. Our little dogfight helped us shave two seconds off our best time and we ended the race in the 2:19s. We’d pushed each other to do better. But in the end, it was Karan who came up on top. I really had to get things right in Round 3.

So, the night before practice and qualifying for Round-3, we shared a cold beer, shook to a fair fight and promised to go out there and find more speed than last time around. The grid was fuller too, ten of us this time around. Most of the familiar faces were back, including our space rocket - Mandar Sawant. Same bikes too - TVS Apache RTR 200 4V’s with light mods, and surprisingly, that’s all it takes to make it track hungry.

We had the new TVS Protorq tyres on for this round and my heart began to pound louder. Why, why during the final race? I really can do without new variables over all this pressure. But after some box-breathing and recalling the words of a good friend, “I hope these words stay with you - You got this! For the race and more”, it was go-time and on the track we went, one by one for practice. The next twenty minutes turned out to be life altering because I was exploring the depths of my fears.

During practice I built my pace up, gradually, but surely. After the last race, that anxiety over this track had diminished, I felt like ‘I got this’. There were sections where I was pushing, but that was purely because I wasn’t getting that set of corners right and I didn’t want to slow down to figure out what I was doing wrong. You seldom do when you’re on a mission, right?

Wrong!

Although I’d shaved a second off my last best time and landed in the 2:18s, I was fighting the bike, not trusting it, hence my goal of 2:16 seemed a bit out of reach. But, what’s holding me back? Just before qualifications, Akash Paul helped put the last piece of the puzzle together. He pointed out that in sector-3 I was considerably slower than others- the same sector where I’m pushing to get all the speed I could get. Hence, I decided to take on a new approach: I went slower through those corners, found more control, and sure enough, at the end of quali I was in the 2:17s and closer to my goal.

How ironic, no? I was pushing harder for more speed, but finding none. However, by going slower, I found more pace. The magnitude of that learning peeled away the harder calluses of my mind and helped start race day from pole, and now I knew I got this. But then came Karan Singh (I hate this guy!). Lap one and he just couldn’t see me have it, found a gap at turn 9A and nailed it to take the lead. It shook me for a bit, but then I heard it again, “you got this!”.

AAs soon the silence calmed the mind, I felt alone on the track and quickly started to find my pace again. Everything disappeared and turn after turn, the motorcycle and I were vibing. Ask any racer and they’d tell you to look where you want to go, and make sure to have fun while at it. Never understood that until now. Trust is knowing where you want to go and just having fun along the way. It’s about going faster when all instincts scream ‘BRAKE!’ and slowing down when a panicking mind says ‘PUSH!’.

Winning this championship has been a dream come true. Being a racer, even just for a season, has been nourishing.

I’d like to thank my team for that, my boys at ZigWheels. Without TVS and its sincere effort towards motorsports in India, this platform wouldn’t have been available, so thank you. As for the boys I’ve had the pleasure of competing with, cheers, it’s been one heck of a year, hope to ride with you all soon!

Regards,
Ishan Lee
Poona-20