Winner winner high octane dinner

We at CarWale are all about buying cars. Sitting at the top of the online buying game, it’s what we do, what we have done for nearly 15 years now and will continue to do so for the next 15 years. But every once in a while, there comes an opportunity to do so much more and in this case its motorsports! Being the lifeblood of every vehicle enthusiast (us too), it is a chance for us to push our machines in a controlled environment in a bid for that ultimate prize - the top step of the podium!

Cue in the Valley Run and its core principle - drag racing. In existence since 2013, it’s been one of the primary events on India’s motorsports calendar and has been held with resounding success every year since its inception.

Well, like every year, we packed up, took the short drive from our office in Navi Mumbai to the Aamby valley Airstrip in Lonavala and got our game faces on! Like our previous two visits, we participated in the festival and this time around our efforts were rewarded with the highest honour possible!

600 were the numbers of the beasts

600 participants! That’s how many people entered the proceedings. Be it as individuals or as teams, that’s a phenomenal number and we are talking about pan India participation with contestants coming from as far as Kerala to be a part of the 400-metre dash for glory. Each passing year has seen the numbers go up both in terms of quality and quantity! And we are not just talking about cars but bikes as well!

The plot of the game

An FMSCI sanctioned event, the Valley has over 16 categories for cars. These sixteen categories cover everything and anything that has four wheels and meets the guidelines of the sport. Every car has to be registered, scrutinised by the scrutineers, stickered up in a specific manner to be able to qualify for a chance on the track. Same cars can enter multiple categories (provided they meet the rules). Every participant is given one practice run and then a final dash to glory. The participants in each class are randomised to give everyone the best chance to succeed.

Innovation is the key

One of the key highlights of any motorsports event with such a wide variety of categories is the incredible amount of innovation in developing race cars. In motorsports every millisecond matters and to eke out those extra kilometres to save those precious milliseconds is an art form of a phenomenal kind.

We saw everything that could be done to make a better faster car. Aerodynamic tweaks, engine remapping, bigger power plant, specially prepped tyres, performance tyres were just some of the innovations that the contestants resorted to improve their timings.

One of the main areas of tweaking was weight loss. Bare shells of vehicles, bereft of even their doors, with just the needed racing equipment, shared space in the pit garage with cars that had been fitted with carbon fibre parts for an even more extreme weight loss.

The challengers

As had been the case in the previous years, the entry-level and mid-level line up comprised many modified as well as stock Skoda Octavia/Laura's/Octavia, Honda Citys, Honda Civic's, Honda Accord's and so many Volkswagen Polo's, you would think that this was the India edition of Worthersee festival. Noticeably absent was the Maruti Zen but in its place came participants with Swift's, Esteem's, Baleno and even an Ignis. Up the order, were the performance sedans from BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi as well as cars like Mitsubishi EVO's.

Day 2 saw the arrival of the hypercar brigade with a major turnout for Lamborghini in the form of Aventadors and Huracans. Representing the country that created drag racing, were a couple of very desirable looking and noticeably loud Ford Mustangs.

Four rings for a successful third

We took part and WON! Yes, we got third time lucky with a victory for our Associate Editor Abhishek Nigam in the H2 class (Foreign Cars from 2500cc-3499cc) with the Audi RS5. His valiant efforts at the hand of this fine piece of German engineering saw a phenomenal time of 11.97 seconds! We tried our hand with the Volkswagen GTI in 2017, BMW 3 Series GT 330i in 2018 and finally hit payday with the RS5 this year. We have chronicled our experience with Audi RS5 at the 2019 Valley Run in a separate story and you can read about that here.

Return

This Valley Run has been phenomenal for us with Audi RS5’s victory guaranteeing that we will return next year to aim for a gold once again and hopefully with a bigger bunch and even more powerful cars.

But this edition of the Valley Run has been an eye-opener for many more reasons. The motorsports scene in India is alive, well and teeming with minds capable of producing phenomenal innovations. I was truly amazed to see the way competitors were modifying their vehicles to bring outperformance that would shave off a few more milliseconds.

Photos: Janak Sorap & Desirazu Venkat