Track Day

We all love our cars and truth be told, we love speed and the exhilaration it brings. In an ideal world, we would want to drive performance cars at gobsmacking speeds, but as we know, going fast on public roads poses a lot of practical problems – things like traffic, unmarked roads, pedestrians and sometimes, a herd of oblivious cattle. The ideal thing to do, then, is to collate a bunch of performance cars and gauge their dynamic abilities in absolute terms in a controlled environment. And by controlled environment we mean a racetrack and for CarWale Track Day that means the 3.7km long Madras Motor Race Track in Chennai. Home to a list of India’s grassroots racing scene, the MMRT is a great place to push the handling envelope of cars. It’s not a track that favours horsepower; instead a car with great chassis balance is what really shines around its bumpy and sinuous layout.

Handling prowess is going to be the definitive element given that we will be ranking the cars (from varying categories) ultimately on lap times of the full circuit at the MMRT. Last year, we brought together 8 cars for the inaugural CarWale Track Day but for this year’s edition powered by Michelin we have picked up the pace big time, with nearly twice as many machines. The cars, in fact, will be grouped by price and body style. Also, there will be some seriously fast machinery this year at the higher end of things with star performers including the Beast of the Green Hell – the Mercedes AMG GTR and Audi’s evergreen supercar – the R8 V10. While we are on the subject of German supercars, we will also have the RS7 Performance – a legit four seater luxury sedan that goes like a supercar and sounds like one, too.

Rounding off the ‘crazy fast’ list of cars will be VW’s Ameo Cup Car, which although based on the humble Ameo compact sedan, is actually a hardcore track weapon that will prove its worth when we talk lap times. Moving on to everyday performance machines, we will have Volvo’s super cool but lethal S60 Polestar and the gorgeous Audi S5, both all-wheel drive family sedans with more than enough go to shame entry level sports cars at a race track. Speaking of sports car rivalling performance, it will be interesting to see how well the popular Mini Cooper S JCW and the manic Skoda Octavia RS perform head-to-head at the MMRT.

No track day is complete without a pair of budget hot hatchbacks going all out for supremacy. Last year we had the Punto Abarth and the Ford Figo and this time around, you will get to see Maruti’s Baleno RS tussling with the segment originator – the VW Polo GT TSI. Perhaps the most interesting battle to watch out for will be that of the least track friendly cars we will have this year. These include the Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza, Tata Nexon and the Ford EcoSport. As we have established in the past, all three crossovers are spacious, practical and brilliant daily drivers but how they are likely to perform against the clock is anybody’s guess. Let the battles begin!