TVS Young Media Race Program 8.0 Round 1: I messed up!

Free Practice & Qualifying

2:23 – that was my best time at the qualifiers. So when I entered, my goal was to get better timing that weekend, and if possible, also secure a decent spot in the starting grid. Well, the plan was set in motion. It included getting my braking points marked in the free practice and also tweak the rear suspension by decreasing the preload. At the end of the second free practice, I realised I could get better with late braking, especially at C10, where I did see a lot of riders slow down quite a bit. TVS engineers helped me by tuning the front brake a bit. I wanted a bit more bite and also a better feel, so the engineers did bleed the brake. There was an option to install a new pair of brake pads too. But I decided not to go ahead with it because it will take some time to get those new pads to reach maximum potential.

After two back-to-back practice sessions, I felt I had improved quite a bit. My best timings came down to 2:18 and that’s a massive drop from the selection round. I was quite happy with this performance. Even in the qualifiers, I applied every strategy I worked on and managed to secure third position in the grid at 2:19. The race day was 24 hours away and I started worrying about the most obvious disadvantage I had – my weight.

The Race Day

P3 is a really good place to start and luckily I had an excellent start. Just before I could enter C1, I was in P2 and I carried that pace well for an entire lap. Remember I had tweaked my front brake to have better late braking? Well, it worked well, especially at C10. I was at P2 and just before we could hit the straights, I managed to get very close to the P1 rider. Thanks to slipstream, I overtook him at C1 and managed to continue that position for a few more corners. But weight was my biggest problem and I was overtaken quite easily just before C4, but I saw a great opportunity to overtake the P1 rider from the outer line. It was a gutsy move, but I know the Apache RTR 200 race bike could do it extremely well, and it happened. I was leading the race once again. However, it didn’t last long. 

At the straights, I was slower compared to the lighter riders and just before C10, I went a bit wide and unknowingly opened a big gap. As a result, I was overtaken by another rider. I did get a chance to overtake again in the straights, but just before I could make the move, I was pushed a bit out. I tried to regain some of the position at C3, but I was again pushed out of the track. Post this, I lost momentum, as it got difficult to chase the riders ahead. I lost three positions and ended up P6. Due to my weight, it was getting increasingly difficult to find that pace and I eventually finished the race in P5.

While I understand that I had no control over the power-to-weight ratio of my bike, I did have control over racing lines. I should have focused a lot more on my lines, and not on what is happening to the rider ahead. I messed up here big time. I also messed up twice - once at C3 and another once at C10 on Lap 3. I accidentally took these corners on third gear instead of second, and that poor acceleration from the apex resulted in a much bigger gap between me and the riders ahead.

What’s next?

Round 2 is just a few weeks away and my strategy is just to implement whatever I did in Round 1 but this time around, focus on the racing lines a bit more. I have also worked on reducing my body weight, hoping to get a bit faster. I’ve lost close to 4kgs since my last race, and this weight is likely to help me get a bit better at MMRT on 4 August.