Introduction

Our annual ‘trek’ to Chennai to go and spend two days at the race track driving and assessing the latest in the Indian car market finally returned after a one-year hiatus. At first, our formula was going to be unchanged from the previous visits- fast cars, lots of horsepowers, tyre screeching and as much photo and videography that time would permit in those two days.

But what’s the fun in routine? We had done the same thing for the last three editions and so we decided to take a different approach to the CarWale Track day 2021. This time around we would go with everyday heroes. A chance to see how good an affordable daily driver would perform when taken to a race track. We put together a seven-car lineup for the track day and went racing! Now if you have visited the reviews section over the last two months, you would have seen each of the stories go live and with them a series of superb pictures shot by our photographers, Kapil Angane and Kaustubh Gandhi. Well here is their pick of the lot and a little story behind each of them.

Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza

The Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza is, what we would like to term, the last of the originals. It was the only naturally aspirated car in the line-up and while it may not have been the fastest, its 1.5-litre petrol engine’s need to be revved hard meant Bilal, who reviewed the car, enjoyed standing on the throttle at every possible opportunity!

Volkswagen PoloCup Car

Volkswagen has been the most significant player in Indian motorsports in India since it began over a decade ago. Now, it’s opened the chance for people to come to the race track and drive its Cup car under its ‘Arrive and Drive programme’ and that is exactly what we did at the track day. 205bhp, six-speed sequential box and a race-spec ABS sound like fun don’t they?

Behind the scenes

That’s Siddharth and Kaustubh seated in the grass near a turn waiting for the cars to kiss the apex as they go by for a cornering pan shot. The cars may be the stars but it’s the imagination and skills of those behind the lenses that have helped in telling the stories that you see on the CarWale website and YouTube channel.

Tata Nexon

This picture is more or less a summary of what this track day has been all about. Right rear tyre in the air, full front left suspension compression and driver being pressed against door fighting G-forces while also trying to control the car. The Tata Nexon may have been the slowest car on track but from Ninad’s experience, he had a superb time wringing the life out of it!

Hyundai i20

Hyundai's premium hatchback has been making quite a few waves since arriving at the end of 2020. For this 2021 track day we got our hands on the i20 1.0-litre seven-speed DCT version which was impressive in its own right thanks to a well-tuned chassis and a strong mid-range to match the shifting skills of the dual-clutch gearbox.

BikeWale Track Day 2021

Our Track day wasn’t just a celebration of four wheels but also one of two-wheel a.k.a the BikeWale Track day 2021. You can head over to our sister website and their YT channel BikeWale.com and YouTube.com/bikewaleofficial for all the details. In this picture, the team is helping Vikrant make some adjustments to the TVS Apache RR310 Race Bike before going for a hot lap.

BMWM340i

There’s absolutely nothing like a big German RWD biased sedan to go flying around the track. While budget heroes may have been the theme, we did need a leader for the heroes and thus this BMW M340i. Here’s Vikrant, in this shot, coming hard out of C5 the opposite way and stepping the tail out as one must do while driving a Beemer on the race track.

Honda Citydiesel

The Honda City held one major distinction, which is that it was the only diesel car in our group of vehicles and thus required a different approach in hustling it around the race track. Early on the gas and steering to take advantage of strong mid-range for a quick power lap was our mantra. Its soft suspension meant, getting it to compress through the turns wasn’t all that much of a task.

Calm before the storm

Here’s Sagar in the M340i adjusting the settings to ensure the car is to his liking before setting off to put in the fastest lap of our track day in this big German sedan. In the larger scheme of things, a track day is all about preparation- be it the car or the driver. After all, if you are on the edge of performance, you want everything to be at 100 per cent for an optimum result.

Volkswagen Polo

The Polo cup car may have stolen the limelight for some of its crazy performance but that doesn’t mean the regular Polo was too far behind. The 1.0-litre TSI AT and six-speed AT combination was a hoot on the race track race and in fact, was only beaten by the 340i in terms of lap times. We drove the car from HQ, raced it and drove it back without losing a step on the way.

Photography: Kapil Angane & Kaustubh Gandhi