Watching motorcycle racing is always fun, but then, watching an international event with riders from all over Asia is even more fun. The last time an event of this scale happened, it was way back in 1997, so its been 12 year drought of International Road Racing in India. So as one of the biggest motor sporting events in recent times, the Sidvin Festival of Speed got off to a slightly shaky start today here at the Sriperumbudur track this morning.

Adtiya Dev, Kavitha and myself, left Bangalore by 5am to be on time at the track. We did reach the track after a 330km drive in a little over 4 hours. We may as well have taken 10hrs to reach the track as there were no access passes to the track. Despite having made all arrangements and getting confirmations, we had to wait 4 hrs before we got to take any snaps. Apparently, since we didn't attend the press meet the earlier day, we'd have to wait till tomorrow to get onto the track. Damn, this pretty much screwed up our plans for the day. As we sat around at the track office hoping for some passes, we realised that other people were on their way shooting. Luckily for us, there was not much action in the 4hrs that we sat around. 

As we sat around in the track office a bunch of young boys landed up having an animated conversation. They were introduced to me as the guys who have won at the TT. For a second, I thought they were pulling my leg when I saw the name Torq Racing. What ensued was an animated conversation for a while with them explaining the effort that went into getting to the Isle of Man to fulfill their dreams. Kapil Shilke and his friends who had landed up from Pune to Chennai with their Isle of Man TT winning electric motorcycle were trying to get some place to park their motorcycle to attract potential sponsors to fund their next year's effort. Their effiort and pictures of their bike is detailed else where on this site, take a look at it by clicking here(not yet ready).

Eventually, the impatience in us, took over from the decent people that we are usually. We decided to go towards the end of the circuit, to shoot some snaps. What we realised when we reached there was that the fence was open at the spot and we managed some good snaps for a while, with the rest of the photographers who had got the media snaps. Yay for open gates!

Now that we did the photographs for a while, we headed out to lunch and then back to track. This was when qualifying started and we had a good time looking at the sessions as well as covering them. We moved after a while to the bridge entry left hander, which is a great place to view some racing. This is also the corner where I had a big crash on the bullet once.

So sitting around at the turn, we noticed that there were pigs on the track! Hell yeah, that was a hilarious as well as a scary moment! Riders from 9 odd countries doing the UAM qualifying were on the track, riding Honda CBF 125s. The family of about 4 pigs hung around, the turn, watching the bikes flying by. The marshals were quick to chase them away, which helped. But for tomorrow, hopefully we won't be having them during the race tomorrow. Enjoy a few snaps from the event for now