The third season of the Indian Festival of Racing began last month at the Madras International Circuit on the outskirts of Chennai, followed by the second round at the Chennai Formula Racing Circuit, India’s first night road race.
The festival has two championships: The Indian Racing League (IRL) is based on the Indian Formula 4 franchise and championship. The Indian F4 Championship is the first step on the ladder for youngsters looking to graduate from karts to formula car racing. By having it in India, the organizers hope to help young Indian drivers stay in the country and run the series at a fraction of the cost of doing the same category in Europe.
While helping drivers is one part of the equation – and it remains to be seen how much it can improve – the league has a deeper impact on another group of young Indians who want to have a career in motorsport.
The driver is the protagonist of the sport, showing tremendous grit and courage to throw the machine at high speed with control and precision.
Heart rate
But there is another group of people who actually exercise the beating heart, help design and run this machine – engineers.
The cars used in F4 and IRL are made in Europe, and engineers from abroad are needed to run them. For example, the F4 car is run by a Dutch team called MP Motorsport, which competes in feeder categories like F2, F3 and some regional F4 championships.
But since last year, there have been efforts to bridge this gap by adding more Indian engineers to the mix. During the first two rounds of the 2024 championship in Chennai, youngsters – graduates and those still pursuing degrees – were seen working on laptops to download data and running with car parts up and down the pitlane.
The students are part of the United Motorsports Academy (UMA), an initiative started by a former F1 aerodynamicist to help Indians become motorsport engineers.
After a two-week course at UMA, he qualified for an internship in the IRL and F4 series as part of a scholarship called LIME (Launchpad for Indian Motorsports Engineers).
The company is the brainchild of Shubham Sangodkar – who worked with F1 champion team Red Bull Racing in 2021 and 2022 – and Omkar Rane.
Shubham Sangodkar. | Photo Credit: Siva Sankar Arokaran
“After returning to India, I started giving guest lectures, and the problem I saw 10 years ago still exists because there is no real platform for people who want to become motorsport engineers,” Sangodkar says of what prompted him to start UMA.
“So I took a step back to see what I could do. I did some career counseling and recorded an online course that went viral, which had 1200 students,” he said.
“However, there was a bigger problem to solve, so UMA came up. I then partnered with Akhilesh Reddy and Aditya Patel (founder of IRL), and they also wanted to do this. So, I offered to take on this vertical.
For Sangodkar, the goal in four to five years is for Indians to make up 80% of the engineers in the Indian F4 championship.
“My vision is to create a program that allows us to do it. Last year, we did a four-day program, which was not optimized because of the time. But this year, we can do what we wanted last year,” said the former Red Bull engineer.
As part of that, UMA conducted a 13-day workshop earlier this year for a cohort of 146 applicants, who participated in an equal number of days of theory and practical training in Mumbai.
Photo Credit: Siva Sankar Arokaran
The course is run by Rex Keen, a former race engineer and technical director who has worked in various motorsport categories. It was held at the D&O Motorsports garage, where students got classes on one side and hands-on experience on the other side of the garage.
At the end of the course, the students took an open-book test, where 24 qualified for the LIME scholarship to do this year’s internship in F4 and IRL. Even last year, 24 students passed LIME 1.0, some of whom returned twice this year.
Students learn about angular balance, wheel torque, open-wheel car architecture, and double-wishbone suspension. This season, 36 people who have been in the program are now participating. These interns do everything a mechanic asks, from recording track temperatures and tire pressures throughout the day to helping with set-ups. The seven junior race engineers in this group did all the post-session data.
Going forward, Sangodkar said the aim is to make the next round of the ladder and develop the talent. “LIME is now a program of identification and improvement of skills. My vision is to nurture talent and give 100 opportunities for voluntary motorsport at a high level in this country, and out of that, take 10-15 abroad and give them opportunities.
“People who do this, their resumes look good. Whether it’s a scholarship you’re looking for when applying abroad or differentiation in the market when trying to find a job with a big manufacturer, this helps,” added Sangodkar.
Photo Credit: Siva Sankar Arokaran
success story
One of the success stories of the LIME program is Mrugank Divekar, who joined last year and works in the FIA F2 series. Divekar, who impressed engineers during the 2023 season, is said to be working on an upcoming F1 movie starring Hollywood star Brad Pitt. The opportunity to get into the F1 box while shooting helped Divekar network and eventually get a job in F2.
Marc Stephen, a third year Mechanical and Automotive engineering student from VIT Vellore, is doing this internship for the second year. “Last year, I participated in the F4 championship, and it was about observation and learning. This year, I was able to work on the car. I am the main data engineer for the Kolkata team in IRL. So, after each session, we check reliability and collect data,” said Stephen .
“What we learn here is related to what we learn in college. You never learn like this anywhere else. In mechatronics, there is something called an Electronically Controlled Solenoid. We see it used here. In addition, we open engine and do a compression test. This is something you read about in college, and we do it here.
Pranav Rao, a fourth-year engineering student from Bengaluru who is also doing this internship for the second year, credits UMA for coming up with the initiative.
“What we do here is abcd put the car in. We do the data work, we understand the car inside, the tires, the driver coach and the psychology. We can sit down with the MP Motorsport guys and learn how the race weekend goes. These guys win championships F2 last year. So it’s an amazing platform.
“During the two-week course, we started by understanding the suspension system, slightly aero, and vehicle dynamics and completed the basics. Our mentor Rex Keen has drilled us with a lot of knowledge, and because of that, our foundations are solid,” he said.
Akshara Vinjamuri, a third-year Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering student from Symbiosis Institute of Technology, was a trackside engineer last year and is a junior assistant race engineer in the F4 category this year.
“This year, I have to do more things and have more responsibilities. My job is to sit with the chief engineer and understand how to handle the weekend. They do the data and the details of the car. They predict what they will do and what they will do. next,” explained Akshara.
“There is a lot of analysis, which I chose. You can’t learn analysis because everyone has their own thought process. I’m here to understand what my thought process is and how I can do it. I see what my engineer said to the driver so that I can solve it myself in the future home. It’s a big learning curve. You can’t learn, but you have to understand,” he added.
Photo Credit: Siva Sankar Arokaran
Akshara also feels that the LIME program is a great way to have more women in motorsports. “I want other women to follow my path. If there is a woman who is interested in motor sports, please come to UMA”
India, especially South India, is known to produce thousands of engineers every year. So why hasn’t motorsport engineering started yet? According to Sangodkar, one reason is that mechanical engineering departments are undervalued in Indian colleges.
“Mechanical engineering departments are one-tenth the size of Computer Science or IT. So colleges and universities find it difficult to do it qualitatively because of the cost of equipment and professors.
“If we can implement motor sports as part of the mechanical engineering curriculum, we can make it attractive and profitable. But we need constant encouragement,” he said.
The program is open to applicants over the age of 16, and students do not need an engineering background. Sangodkar even cited an example of a student from a commerce background who had a passion for motorsport and came second in the test.
“This is the vision that we have collectively at UMA and RRPL. Together, we want to build the whole ecosystem, and we cannot have it without strong grassroots. There is good support from RRPL and the scope to take some junior race engineers and mechanics to champions in the UAE or elsewhere.
When that happens, you get a call from a race engineer to come and work for a race weekend or two, and that’s how this ecosystem grows. In four or five years, you will have enough Indians in this ecosystem, and it will grow,” Sangodkar said as he signed his note with hope.
Published – September 17, 2024 06:19 IST