2023 JK Tyre NRC Round 2: A Thrilling & Fitting Example Of Racing At The Grassroots Level

I was at Kari Motor Speedway during the October 7th-8th weekend to witness the 2nd round of the 26th JK Tyre FMSCI National Racing Championship 2023 and boy was it a thrilling affair! This is my second time out at an NRC race weekend and it gave me a strong reminder of why grassroots-level racing championships are so fun.  

Racers driving their single-seater racing cars powered by a 1,298cc Suzuki G13BB engine in the LGB Formula 4 category kickstarted the weekend and Arya Singh from Dark Don Racing just dominated with three wins out of four races over the course of those two days. The sight of Diljith TS catching up to Arya Singh and both racers exchanging positions several times led to some full-on gung-ho racing action. 

Equally scintillating racing ensued in the Royal Enfield Continental GT Cup with the revving Continental GT-R650’s thunderous roar creating a sweet symphony across the racetrack. The whole experience had the distinct aura of a typical, exhilarating race weekend with the alluring smell of gasoline, racers revving their engines in sync at the race start and young racers fighting for gaps leading to crashes and passes you wouldn’t normally anticipate. 

Talking about race weekends, of course MotoGP, the highest level of professional two-wheel racing, made its debut in India more than a month ago and it was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime event for those lucky enough to witness it at the Buddh International Circuit. As spectacular as that was, local race weekends like the JK Tyre National Racing Championship offer that racing action in a smaller scale and much, much more as you can witness budding racers honing their craft and racing at the same time with some of them potentially making it into the highest levels of professional racing in the future. 

And I know, calling the JK Tyre NRC a ‘local race weekend’ is blasphemy. JK Tyre has been involved in motorsports for over 40 years now and even the NRC is on its 26th edition now! They have been a trailblazer in developing the motorsport culture in the country. Their exploits in rallying during the 80s and 90s with the legendary Hari Singh are the stuff of legends. Throughout their history, they have created multiple champions who have gone to race professionally at the highest levels of different motorsport categories like Jehan Daruvala, Aditya Patel and Armaan Ebrahim to name a few. And who can forget Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandok racing in Formula One in the 2010s. 

Attending race weekends at a grassroots yet national level lets you get the true blue experience of a race weekend as you get to roam outside the paddocks and catch team owners and racers and have a casual chat about their preparations and expectations. Heck, you might even catch Hari Singh strolling about and pick his brain about his racing career, how it all started and just about anything you want because he, like most Indian racing legends, is always a chilled-out person to talk to. And if you are lucky, you might catch him driving one of the tricked-out Maruti Suzuki Baleno stunt cars on two wheels (skiing) around the track! Or get a joyride with the drift maestro Sanam Sekhon and have a first-hand experience of what it feels like from the inside of a car when it’s being ferociously tossed sideways. 

And the racing action is always entertaining to say the least because remember, these are young racers still learning their trade and as such, mistakes do happen as one of them tries to go for a gap that doesn’t exist and in turn goes sliding into the run-off area and the barricades. Or on the flipside, one of them might make a very risky and thrilling manoeuvre you haven’t even seen on TV before and come out of it looking as cool as a cucumber.

These are some of the unique scenarios you get to witness at events like the JK Tyre NRC and other grassroots level racing championships because at the highest professional level, even though crashes and cool manoeuvres do happen there of course, the racers are well aware of the risks involved and every move is well calculated and strategized. But at your local race weekends, it’s pretty much raw, adrenaline-fueled, pedal-to-the-metal racing from start to finish! So, next time you see a race weekend on the Indian racing calendar, do check them out and who knows, you might even end up chatting to a future Formula One or MotoGP racer in the process.