Indian Racing League: The Journey Continues | Asia Motorsports Network
Way back in August, 2021 when the announcement was made that India was about to have a formal ladder for young drivers to climb beginning in 2022 the revamped Indian Racing League barely received mention. All the fanfare was around the newly created Formula Regional Indian Championship and F4 Indian Championship which were both set to provide their winners valuable FIA Super License points. However, by the time 2022 ended the Indian Racing League was the only one who found it’s way to the track.
The Indian Racing League started life back in 2019 as the X1 Racing League, the brainchild of racers Aditya Patel and Armaan Ebrahim who aimed to rejuvenate India Motorsport with a unique city based franchise team model. A concept relatively unheard of in Motorsport, but common in hugely popular sports like cricket in India and many other sports throughout the world. Their plan involved having 6 to 8 city teams running 2 cars with a total of 5 drivers. The team make up being 5 different categories of drivers: international male, international female, Indian with international experience, an Indian with national experience, and a junior driver. The would use a lottery style system to “draft” drivers to each team providing an incredibly balanced field. It was an incredibly ambitious undertaking for the pair racers, but they managed to pull it off at least some what. The vastly scaled down 2019 version of the series featured only two race weekends and teams ending up running with outdated under powered Formula BMW’s. While the inaugural season was considered a letdown by some, they did succeed in launching the series, crowning their first champion Bangalore Racing Stars and gaining invaluable experience in what worked and what didn’t. Unfortunately, with the onset of Covid restrictions it was unclear whether or not X1 Racing League would ever be able to act on their lessons learned.
Fast forward to 2022… Knowing everything they overcame in 2019 to launch the series it should come as no surprise they decided to press forward with the rebranded Indian Racing League even after FRIC and F4 announced they would postpone their launches until 2023. Along with the rebrand came all new Wolf GB08 Thunder cars capable of delivering the performance and reliability lacking in the original Formula BMW’s. However, when all three races of the 1st round at the redesigned Hyderabad Street Circuit, which is set to host Formula E in 2023, were suddenly called off before a single checkered flag ever dropped many were left with flashbacks to X1’s struggles in 2019. According to statement provided by organizer Racing Promotions Private Limited “There was an incident during practice session with one car, and as a matter of abundant precaution and advice from FMSCI stewards and FMSCI along with the RPPL technical team, we have postponed the races to further investigate the incident.”
With the next round less than a week away at Madras Motor Race Track in Chennai it was unclear whether there would be 2022 season contested or not. Once again, the Indian Racing League found a way to rise to the challenge and completed all 3 races in Chennai as planned. That’s not to say the weekend was without challenges as the weekend featured a large number of drivers retiring for various reasons. The first official round ended with a clean sweep by the Hyderabad Blackbirds, but the seeds were being sowed that this was going to be an extremely competitive series. Malaysian Alister Yoong, who was a very late replacement for Godspeed Kochi, didn’t even arrive in Chennai until Saturday morning and still managed to find the pace to finish 2nd in the Sprint race. As a further connection between X1 Racing League and the Indian Racing League, Alister is the son of Asia racing legion Alex Yoong who racing in the X1 series in 2019. Despite joining the series “in progress”, Alister proved to be a force to be reckoned with as he went on to win the final 2 Sprint Races as well as the final Featured Race with teammate Nikhil Bohra.
The 3rd round also contested in Chennai, saw more balanced result with far fewer drivers retiring despite some very adverse weather. Alister Yoong and India’s Shahan Ali Mohsin racing for Speed Demons Delhi won the respective Sprint Races while Hyderabad Blackbirds team of Neel Jani and Akhil Rabindra who dominated in round 2 captured the Feature Race. Also of note, Bianca Bustamante (Philippines) fresh off her W Series rookie season, saw her podium finished wiped away due to some unfortunate penalties ultimately finishing 8th and 6th in her respective races.
The eagerly anticipated final round saw action return to the Hyderabad Street Circuit to find out who would claim the driver and team titles. As now should be expected, the final round wasn’t without it’s problems as weather wiped out the action on Saturday and Sunday saw many of the drivers facing not only a street circuit for the first time, but a wet street circuit. With series leader Neel Jani out, the hometown Hyderabad Blackbird’s turned to replacement driver Tom Canning, 2019 British GT4 Champion, in their attempt to secure the 2022 Team Championship. When the Godspeed Kochi team of Yoong and Bohra captured wins in both Sprint Races, the stage was set for the final team battle between Kochi and Hyderabad in the Feature Race. With Godspeed Kochi’s double win in the Sprint Races, Rabindra and Canning were faced with needing a victory in the final Featured Race to claim the team title. However, the wet track was too much for them to overcome as they spun in the opening corner of the featured race ending their day and chance to bring home the championship. Godspeed Kochi made it a clean sweep for the weekend after a penalty knocked race winners Chennai Turbo Riders to fourth.
The Goodspeed Kochi team of Yoong / Bohra and Ruhaan Alva / Fabienne Wohlwend captured the outright team championship followed by Hyderabad Blackbirds and Goa Aces. Despite Yoong and Bohra’s impressive final weekend, the points racked up by Hyderabad’s Rabindra and Jani were too much to over come in the drivers championship battle. Rabindra’s final weekend performance was just enough to edge out teammate Jani for the championship with Kochi teammates Yoong, Bohra, Alva and Wohlwend finishing 3rd through 6th respectively.
While no official calendar has been released for 2023, given everything they had to overcome in 2019 and 2022, AMN fully expects the journey will continue with the same format in the November / December timeframe with some additional venues and possibly additional teams being added.
For a more detailed look at the series checkout this brilliant video from Overdrive.
