The third and final round of the TVS Young Media Racer Programme (YMRP) saw us take P2 in the race and P3 in the overall championship. Here is how it went off
So far as drama is concerned, the final round of the TVS YMRP takes the cake. On race day, with less than five minutes to go for the formation lap, my bike was being dismantled and put together following its failure to fire up due to an electrical issue. I waited patiently as four technicians craned their necks and tried to help each other put together the Apache RTR 200 race bike.
As a teenager, I used to compete in a number of bicycle races and was used to suffering punctures during the final moments before a race start. So, I was used to adrenaline-pumping last-minute scenarios presenting themselves and this didn’t shake me much since I had all the support from the TVS team to fix the bike.
Once the bike was put together and ready to go, I swung a leg over it and got on to the track. I was the last racer to line up on the grid, slotting in P5 where I had qualified. The previous day, in Practice, I had finished with the third fastest time and in Qualifying I could only manage the fifth fastest time to my disappointment. Although I felt comfortable on the bike and felt fast, the competitors were faster than me.
This made me remember a quote that most of the racers say—‘It’s not over until it’s over’—which means the race isn’t over until the checkered flag drops. There were some overjoyed journalists in the group who thought they had won the race itself merely after qualifying in the first row.
Circling back to the race day situation, I slotted in P5 and had a few seconds to myself before the green flag was waved for the formation lap. I had practised a few race-starts from the pit-lane the previous day and that helped me launch a lot faster than the others. After slowly warming the tyres up and getting comfortable on the bike, all of us made our way to the grid and lined up for the final time with the red lights right in front of us.
A blink of an eye later, the red lights went out and I got a great launch off the line and settled into third position by the first corner, behind Praveen and Karan Mathur.
A few corners in, I realised I was faster than Karan and it would just be a matter of time before I overtook him. However, for me, it was the fear of accidentally letting Praveen go away solo with nobody to close the gap. So, I muscled my way past Karan and went to P2 by the fifth corner and closed the gap to Praveen. After catching up, I stayed behind and tried my best to overtake on the following lap but I didn’t have the momentum to make it stick.
On the penultimate lap, I got out of his slipstream on the back straight and made my move, overtaking him as I headed into Turn Four. I finally led a bike race and it felt amazing. Praveen, meanwhile, was tucked in behind me and got out of my slipstream on the same lap just a few corners later and I lost the lead. His overtake down the inside line shook me off my line a bit and disrupted my pace and, as I headed into the final corner before the last lap, my rear slid out for a fraction of a second, which again dropped my pace further.
By this time Praveen was well ahead of me and was pulling away, I put my head down and pushed to the best I could but the damage was done and I had to be content with second place as I crossed the finish-line at the end of five laps. The race gave me my personal best time around the track, a lap of 2:14.321, which is over two seconds faster than my previous personal best.
In the overall championship, I secured third place with 55 points and missed the second place by just two points.
The TVS YMRP 8.0 felt like college to me and the final round felt like graduation. The programme, over the course of six months, helped me get faster on the bike, build connections all over the country, have camaraderie with like-minded people, while also serving me some really cool knee-dragging pictures that I could post on social media.
A big thank you to the entire TVS Racing team and personnel for conducting this event year after year with such perfection. Maybe, it’s time I tried a hand at professional bike racing? Hmm.
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