‘The more they doubted me, the more I wanted to prove myself’

Asia’s youngest ever Formula Asia champion recounts his journey to victory

Prachi Raturi

He doesn’t have a driving licence, but yes, he races just the way he is, a champion. At 17, Karun Chandhok is the youngest ever Formula Asia champion, but you get that fleeting impression of retreating boyhood only once in a while in his conversation, just like the dimples on his cheeks. For the most part, he remains calm and composed as he tells you about his wheel-driven adventures.

Born to Vicky Chandhok, one of India’s first motor sports veterans, racing was literally in Karun’s blood. So when you ask him, when did he really decide on going into racing, he wears a surprised look. But he’s quick to smile back and reply, “Well, I never really thought about it. Ever since I remember, I wanted to get into motor sports. It was the most instinctive thing for me.”

Of course, he had to wait till he was 16 to really start racing. The wait, he tells you, was pure torture. “I wanted so much to just get into it,” he says with a back-to-boyhood grin. It was finally in 2000 that he made his debut at the 3rd JK Tyre National Racing Championship 2000 at Siriperumbudur and won both races in the first round. But it wasn’t as easy all the way up, he tells you, when you prod him. One of the problems he faced was his weight. “I weighed some 94 kgs and this, I realised after my first race was not the way a motor sports guy should be. It wasn’t quite comfortable,” he explains. He made up his mind to shed the extra kilos, and by the end of the year, weighed a much more comfortable 67 kilos.

The more difficult part, he tells you, was striking a balance between his studies (his class 12 board exams) and practising for the Formula Asia 2001 championship. Given his kind of drive, he didn’t want to compromise on either front, and he didn’t. Straight after his classes, he’d rush to the tracks still in his school uniform. And back from there to his studies. All that he remembered at the end of the day was to hit the bed. But he hastens to add that he remembered his sponsors, JK Tyres, too, every day.

Didn’t he ever feel like leaving one—either racing or studies—for later on and concentrating on the other? “There was no way I could have given up on either, so I just went on. I had people telling my parents that my studies would suffer. This was the ultimate challenge. The more people doubted me, the more I wanted to prove myself,” he says, a glint of determination in his eyes.

Accounts and maths are his favourite subjects, he tells you and reveals, as an afterthought, that he scored 91 per cent in his class 12 exams.

Having won trophies for being The Youngest Ever Formula Asia Champion and The Most Promising Rookie Of The Season only two years into racing, things certainly look bright for this determined young man.