Endurance - The Race, SAE BAJA India 2012.
Almost an year now, and yet, every second of those four scorching hours feels as fresh as a daisy. To others, they may have been just a few more hours of just another test, in just another competition! But to me, they were the best four hours of my life. My maiden race, I proudly proclaim.
Almost an year now, and yet, every second of those four scorching hours feels as fresh as a daisy. To others, they may have been just a few more hours of just another test, in just another competition! But to me, they were the best four hours of my life. My maiden race, I proudly proclaim.
A lot had to be done, and was done.. to get to these four hours. There were times when fate would slap us hard in the face, sometimes land a kick on our bums, or worst, sometimes do both! But every time, we recovered..and thankfully, we recovered good!
Cutting the side story, 16 students..8.5 months and countless hours of work later.. we were where, we were meant to be - biggest event of the competition - Endurance, A four hour race where the vehicle (never call it a car, NEVER) is put to endure a tough terrain which has rocks, jumps, mud pit, steep hill, blah blah blah blah.
Cutting the side story, 16 students..8.5 months and countless hours of work later.. we were where, we were meant to be - biggest event of the competition - Endurance, A four hour race where the vehicle (never call it a car, NEVER) is put to endure a tough terrain which has rocks, jumps, mud pit, steep hill, blah blah blah blah.
So here I was, all suited up. Team crew positioned in the circuit. Transponders mounted. Racing grid formulated. READY FOR ACTION.
The roar from 82 peak-throttling engines was thrilling. And not just thrilling, it was HUGE, making me all the more restless. Besides, I just cannot stand "not driving" when all I want is to drive. As a let-go, I would occasionally roll the vehicle nominally, press brake. Start rolling again, press brake again. Love, makes you look stupid.
The roar from 82 peak-throttling engines was thrilling. And not just thrilling, it was HUGE, making me all the more restless. Besides, I just cannot stand "not driving" when all I want is to drive. As a let-go, I would occasionally roll the vehicle nominally, press brake. Start rolling again, press brake again. Love, makes you look stupid.
Finally the vehicles were signaled good to go with a gunshot (or at least that's what i think it was. In my defense, one cannot be sure about his own scream in such a roar, forget other things). First lap was supposed to be the aligning lap, wherein all the drivers were to follow an ATV, one behind another and not overtake. Was as boring as it sounds :/
BUT even boring is interesting in BAJA. SPLASH! Right through the mud pit! I yelled "wohoooo" at the peak of my ability, enjoying and embracing every blot of keechad that came in.
As soon as the aligning lap was over, The Race started. Like any other team, we had planned on going easy for the first few laps, them being the most critical ones. Imagine 82 vehicles cruising on a 3.3 km track, with a trackwidth that allows maximum two vehicles parallely and sometimes, not even that. Shit is bound to happen, so better play safe until things start to settle.
But, one meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it. Out of nowhere, a moron stuck his right-front wheel in between my left-front and left-rear wheels on one of the low width corners.
Before I could do anything (not that I could have done something :P), my rear wheel started climbing on his front.. tilting the vehicle and finally overturning it. Much like this:
I remember making that fall distinctly, everything slowed down as if it's just a movie made to run at 0.5x on VLC! A fast-made-slow fall, and THUD! And of course, vroom vrrooom vrrrrrommm!
Watching other vehicles pass by you, from a 90 degree angle sure is fun, but scary as hell too! Another moron and a side blow was all it would have taken to keep me and my team from our dream. But thank god, that it was a "face-only-one, kill-that-moron" day for me!
A decade later, I unstrapped myself from the 5-point harness and got the vehicle on all four, with help from event volunteers. 10 minutes of continuous efforts, BUT.. the engine won't crank (start, in layman terms).
Oh fuck.
Abuses for that moron just won't stop flowing! I was scared as hell! Certainly more than I was, while lying overturned. Just then, One of the volunteers asked: "Where are your crew members? Give me a contact number, I will call them here".
Uh oh! I couldn't believe that we were so stupid, that while planning for endurance, we just focussed on setting every crew member's number on every phone's speed dial but never thought that a situation might arise wherein I will need to make a call. Fuck technology, I said to myself.
I had no idea about Aviral's or Sunku's phone numbers, but some about Parth's, sub-conciously (or so I hoped). Luckily, the digits I burped out worked! Parth called Sunku and told him to get to me ASAP.
When Sunku reached me.. he was running out of breath. I told him the entire thing that had happened, with added abuses for that moron! Together, we once again, tried cranking the engine when it suddenly struck us that all this while, kill switch was in kill mode! (Kill switch is what kills the engine, i.e. stops it). We were just too panicky before, to realize it.
As soon as the engine cranked, Sunku came over to strap me in the harness (a 5-point seat belt), but he was shivering way too much for that! Who would'nt?
With enough time already gone, and with volunteers screaming at us.. I decided to go on unstrapped, telling him that the time for safe driving is up! I am going all in now! To go in unstrapped was a big risk to take. Just to give you an idea.. Had I been unstrapped when our vehicle overturned, you probably wouldn't be reading this.
I was hoping badly, to spot someone from the crew to put on the straps, just when I saw anish. Delight. A couple of minutes for strapping, and a few more abuses for that moron later, I was ready to kick ass! Going all in, is what I told Anish too!
The next 70 odd minutes I was all over the steering wheel, skidding through the track..overtaking..swiveling around the track to avoid overtakes against me..basically, pushing myself and the vehicle to our limits.
Eventually, my palms and arms started aching of holding the steering wheel tightly consistently for over 1.5 hours. I told myself that I have two options:
Eventually, my palms and arms started aching of holding the steering wheel tightly consistently for over 1.5 hours. I told myself that I have two options:
1. Take a break - No chance! We had lost enough time already with that overturning, and a break now would cost us at least 3-4 positions. I had, for the same reason, held on to my thirst too. Scorching heat was making it tougher.
2. Survive, what so ever way - I stuck my right hand's thumb in a small cavity on the steering wheel dash, and went on. It did pain for a while, but then it went numb! Numbness helped. A lot.
At the end of two hours, our throttle cable broke! (Throttle cable links the accelerator pedal to the throttle. Without it, you cannot get speed from the engine) I crawled (yeah, that bad!) to the side where Prakriti stood, signalling him that the throttle cable was gone. As soon as he understood what I was saying, he started reaching for his bag, to find the spare cable we had.
Changing the cable would have taken some time, about 15 minutes of it or may be more. So, I instead told him to just engage the throttle at its maximum and tie it to the chassis (structure of the vehicle). That would have meant driving the remaining two hours just with clutch and brake, and using them to control speed. He reacted as expected "Abey paaaagal ho gaya hai kya! Kaise chalayega aise?"
I myself wasn't sure if it was going to work the way I wanted it to. I had heard of the term 'Power shifting' but never implemented it myself - Wiki says: Powershifting is a method of shifting used with manual transmissions to reduce the time where the driving wheels are not powered. Unlike a normal gearchange, in a powershift the driver does not let off the accelerator. The clutch is briefly depressed while the shift lever is rapidly shifted into a higher gear, keeping the engine in its power band. This helps the car accelerate faster, but increases the wear on the clutch and the transmission beyond normal levels and shortens the expected life of these components.
To what amount is the wear to clutch? No clue.
How quick has to be the gear change? No clue.
For how long can power-shifting be used without serious damage to transmission? No clue.
So no, even I wasn't sure if this would work, but somewhere inside, I had a hunch that if someone can, may be I can do it too. I told Prakriti "Arey ho jayega yar, tu toh kar de bas!". He and Anish, together, engaged the throttle to full and pushed us (Me and the vehicle) back on the track. And it worked!! It worked well enough to let us race the remaining 2 hours perfectly! We were amongst the only 15 cars that could last through four hours of endurance, all others (67 of 82) had broken down owing to the roughness of the track.
And however stressfull it might have sounded, It was a lottttt more fun than I had imagined it to be! I will distinctly remember screaming out loud every single time I splashed in the mud pit, the grazing of tyres with other car's tyres (see picture below), wild overtakings..
My first racing experience, but surely not the last!
Signing off..
Race Driver
SAE BAJA India 2012
Inspired Karters Racing, BITS Pilani
(Oh boy! How I love this signature)
At the end of two hours, our throttle cable broke! (Throttle cable links the accelerator pedal to the throttle. Without it, you cannot get speed from the engine) I crawled (yeah, that bad!) to the side where Prakriti stood, signalling him that the throttle cable was gone. As soon as he understood what I was saying, he started reaching for his bag, to find the spare cable we had.
Changing the cable would have taken some time, about 15 minutes of it or may be more. So, I instead told him to just engage the throttle at its maximum and tie it to the chassis (structure of the vehicle). That would have meant driving the remaining two hours just with clutch and brake, and using them to control speed. He reacted as expected "Abey paaaagal ho gaya hai kya! Kaise chalayega aise?"
I myself wasn't sure if it was going to work the way I wanted it to. I had heard of the term 'Power shifting' but never implemented it myself - Wiki says: Powershifting is a method of shifting used with manual transmissions to reduce the time where the driving wheels are not powered. Unlike a normal gearchange, in a powershift the driver does not let off the accelerator. The clutch is briefly depressed while the shift lever is rapidly shifted into a higher gear, keeping the engine in its power band. This helps the car accelerate faster, but increases the wear on the clutch and the transmission beyond normal levels and shortens the expected life of these components.
To what amount is the wear to clutch? No clue.
How quick has to be the gear change? No clue.
For how long can power-shifting be used without serious damage to transmission? No clue.
So no, even I wasn't sure if this would work, but somewhere inside, I had a hunch that if someone can, may be I can do it too. I told Prakriti "Arey ho jayega yar, tu toh kar de bas!". He and Anish, together, engaged the throttle to full and pushed us (Me and the vehicle) back on the track. And it worked!! It worked well enough to let us race the remaining 2 hours perfectly! We were amongst the only 15 cars that could last through four hours of endurance, all others (67 of 82) had broken down owing to the roughness of the track.
My first racing experience, but surely not the last!
I thank and miss my entire team! Love you guys - Akhil Chaturvedi, Alok Pacholi, Aman Khurana, Anish Nayak, Anmol Saxena, Avanish Bankar, Aviral Sharma, Jash Bajaj, Jatin Bansal, Kartik Sunku, Mohit Agarwal, Pallavi Chaudhary, Parth Ved, Prakriti Kumar Singh.
Signing off..
Race Driver
SAE BAJA India 2012
Inspired Karters Racing, BITS Pilani
(Oh boy! How I love this signature)
