Re: Building our dream : Yash Motorsports Park & Motovation Track Days

Thread Approved

Re: Building our dream : Yash Motorsports Park & Motovation Track Days


Thank you for approving @Themonk

So I am going to start with a little history.

Back in 2012- 2013, I was itching to start racing again but thanks to my previous injuries (see several broken bones, torn tendons and a lot of other stuff I am not sure of) going back to being a professional was out of the question. I instead starting going to my old practice grounds around the outskirts of Hyderabad to try and sharpen the very dull blade I had become. I realized a little too late that what I thought were outskirts were now actually within city limits and had buildings sprouting up at every corner not to mention random cattle crossing the road.

I went back home pretty dejected and called up Mazda to see if I could use Kartcave. He agreed as long as I parked my bike permanently at his place. for those of you who don't know KartCave is a go kart track in a basement. And we were more or less responsible for destroying the staircase the last time we took our bikes there, so his condition was not without cause. He wanted a staircase and we were again left with no place to practice

We heard of a much smaller 700m track at one the resorts, badly maintained but it would be the job, decent elevation and pretty technical. We more or less just paid the guy at the reception to use the track. This was pretty cool. We had a safe place to practice/improve our riding skills. This was however short lived, the management came to know about it and shut us down.

I relegated myself to touring for the next 2 years with nothing to do and no place to get my knee down. A very depressing time. This was also when we lost Vinu, a big hit to the biking community in Hyderabad, touring started to scare me and I just rode my bike for my daily commute and nothing else. The godsend was Nikhil & Mihir, 2 completely insane clown who more or less just decided I was their friend. Good company, always ends up with good rides and the weekends started looking up.

----consecutive posts auto-merged-----

Nov 2014 - Waiting

I kept asking Mihir and Nikki to join me when I would go for track days to Chennai and Kari but being true bikers, the both of them were always truly broke. Nikki managed to scam some track time from Sparks Racing while in Chennai in true biker fashion, which was basically stealing leathers and a bike and running off to get on the track. Mihir decided he wanted to be more legit since we was already Saloon car racing and started communicating with Ramji and Jebba to get into the Nationals.

Around this time we also heard of the rumor that a new 1.1km track was being built, we waited patiently and then convinced the local KTM dealer to organise the KTM track day there. We visited the site, it was still under construction, more waiting.

Mar 2015 - Good News

It was almost 2 months since the track opened, it was christened the CHICANE CIRCUIT and we still didn't get a chance to use the track, ONLY KARTS they said. We found out that the track was owned my Mecco and decided to give Akku uncle a call. Akku informed us that KTM had already approached him and there would be a KTM track day held at the track shortly. We were ecstatic and called the local KTM dealer again, he confirmed and also told us Apex would be coming down to test the track, we asked if we could tag along and he agreed.

The KTM track Day was a bomb, we didn't really care for the training, I got shouted at by Anil for overtaking and Nikki got shouted at for only being interested in scraping his knees. All that mattered is that we were back on the track and it felt like home.

----consecutive posts auto-merged-----

April 2015 - The Beginning

We made a few calls, actually not a few, a lot of calls. Akku uncle was irritated and told us to get in touch with the track manager instead of troubling him everyday.

We spoke to the management and they quoted an exorbitant price for the hire of the track, we were crest fallen. After a shit ton more of negotiation we managed to bring down the price on one condition, our events would only have to be run during the off time of the Chicance Circuit. We didn't think twice, we shook hands and took the deal. Waking up at 4am for an hour long drive to the venue wasn't an issue as long as we got our track time.

We started calling all the people we knew, well to split the bill because you know, we are true bikers and true bikers are always broke. About 20 folks showed up the following Sunday and by 6am we hit the track. It became pretty apparent almost immediately that those of us with track experience or prior training was far more comfortable with the track and the speeds. Even with these hiccups we still called the track day a success, no loss, no broken bones, a good Sunday at the end of it.

After the track day we all sat down to discuss what went right and what went wrong at the track day. We were in unison that the timing was not an issue as the temperatures in Hyderabad can get pretty rough during the later part of the day. We were split over the decision of whether we should be giving advice to people considering we weren't trained, we just knew what worked and we practiced. We questioned if we were qualified enough to ask people to entrust their lives on the track on the advice we gave them. We decided to take a little time to see how we can the best of the situation.

I started pouring through my old race notes, little tidbits from Jebba, Clarke, Rajni and loads more, I even managed to salvage a little bit of the CSS manual. We decided to start with the basics for everyone. like literal basics, starting with how you should sit on a bike. People thought we were nuts, for a little bit even we wondered if we were nuts.

May 2015- The Start of Motovation Track Days

We broke the whole day up into 30 min sessions, slowly moulding the people into better riders.

Most listened, some didn't and we usually fixed that by showing them that just being trigger happy with the throttle isn't going to help, butter smooth overtakes were usually followed by feedback sessions to explain why we were able to be faster while not breaking a sweat, the goal wasn't to ride at the limit. The goal was to find the limit and then learn to ride within it.

----consecutive posts auto-merged-----

August 2015- The Tragedy

Motovation Track Days had picked up a steady following and we were holding 2-3 track days every month, we didn't make any money but that didn't matter. We were on the track doing what we loved. The crew who helped us grew as well for just being 4 sleep deprived broke bikers we now had Johnny, Luke, Jason, Ryan, Biggie, Kyathi and a few more who dedicated all their free time into building Motovation into what we hoped would be the revolution the Indian Biking scene needed.

On August 21, 2015, we lost Mihir in a road accident. We were devastated, we didn't even know if we wanted to continue. We decided to take some time off

We kept meeting regularly, spending time on the track built relationships/ friendships that we most probably will keep for a lifetime. Nikki felt that we would be disrespecting the memory of Mihir by giving up without a fight, so we all went back at it, with twice the steam.

October 2015 - Fate


We were still reeling from the loss of Mihir and track days were off the table for the time being. We received an invite for the launch of Yash Motorsports, Mr Raj the founder, wanted to build a drag strip. Most people just snickered at the thought but we saw opportunity, we immediately fixed up a meeting to understand more about his plans. We also pitched a tramac track in addition to the drag strip, he scratched his chin, thought a bit and told us he would get back to us. For the next 2 months there was radio silence

Re: Building our dream : Yash Motorsports Park & Motovation Track Days

November 2015

We wanted people to experience everything that a motorcycle could offer and since we were already running track days on tarmac at the Chicane circuit on a regular basis, we wanted to do something different. When the Chicane circuit was closed for maintenance of the track we started looking for other venues to hold our track days

An acquaintance of ours contacted us and told us that he had about 12 acres of land and wanted to start an MX Park. We met us and visited the area.

It was a very weirdly shaped piece of land with trees and brush all over. It was going to be a lot of work but we decided to go ahead and start designing and building a track. a tractor and bulldozer was hired and the brush and larger stones were moved out of the way. We then used the tractor to clear the patch for the track. We were pretty happy with the end result, a 1.1km with a 300m back straight where people could pick up a decent amount of speed.

We then got the bull dozer in to make the wading pools, articulation pits, berms, jumps, rumblers and slush pits. We had a 10 ft long wading pool with a about 2ft of standing water. 2 articulation pits( which we code named death pits), 2 slush pits, 70m of rumblers, a super sandy patch, one table tops and a couple of jumps to complete the course.

We spent the next week testing and fine tuning the track to ensure that the track was relatively safe for the participants. A little more modifications to slow the bikes down and we were ready for the next event.

We didn't want to make money, we just wanted to cover the costs of the tractor and dozer. We organised a full day open event with no restrictions on the class of the bikes used. Hyderabad never had something like this and on the day of the event we had 12 people show up, far fewer than our usual 30-35. We weren't disappointed though, those who made it, had the time of their lives, most of the bikes ended up in with a new shade of color we now christened the slushathon glaze.

December 2015 - Cop trouble

We learned from our mistakes during the first event and made it cheaper, keeping the costs and facilities to the bare minimum. More people turned up and it finally looked like there was an actual interest in experiencing dirt/offroading, over 30 people showed up for the next event and we looked close to just breaking it even. During lunch, the cops dropped by to check on what was going on, the land owner had assured us that permissions from the Panchayat were in place and we informed the same to the cops. However cops being cops, their egos were hurt because we didn't come to them for the permissions first.

They were of the opinion that we were racing, even after explaining to them that the event was on a closed private property with the appropriate event permissions in place they started manhandling the participants. We ended up having to close the event early and make a couple of trips to the police station to soothe their massive egos.

This more or less spelled doom for the dirt track we had built, no one wanted to come anymore because of the cops harassing them and the cops expected us to cough up payouts, something we couldn't afford because we are true biker and like all true bikers we were truly broke.

Re: Building our dream : Yash Motorsports Park & Motovation Track Days

January 2016
Mr Raj Kattelu contacted us again and informed us that the government had allocated some land, 55 acres to be precise and the project was back on track.

We were super excited and decided to go and check out the newly allocated land. Frankly we were a little disappointed. The land was just outside city limits which was great but thanks to the surrounding granite mines and the composition of the land itself, building a track would be close to impossible. To even begin to fathom the amount of work that was needed before the first brick could be laid was mentally exhausting. The government didn't take motorsports seriously and they felt allocating land was a favor, allocating usable land on the other hand was not very high on their priorities.

We informed Raj and Yash Motorsports that we will try to organise for private land that could be leased for the project because with the current allocation, the expenditure involved in leveling the land and installing requisite drainage would be more expensive than the investment needed for the project. We started asking around in our social circles and the team at Yash Motorsports did the same.

Finding suitable land which wasn't too far away from the city seemed like an almost impossible task

Re: Building our dream : Yash Motorsports Park & Motovation Track Days

phir kya hua??