Sholavaram to Irungatukottai
IMAGE: `Indu Chandhok` in Sholavaram

The first race committee was formed in 1955 with Mr. M A Chidambaram himself as the first chairman. The Committee consisted, besides others, Govind Swaminathan, B I Chandok, F V Arul, the then Inspector General of Police, A Sivasailam, who later became the Chairman of Amalgamations, the Officer Commanding the IAF station at Tambaram & Genji Varugis. Chandok was asked to be the secretary of this committee. The committee was also helped by I K S Sadasivarao and Natarajan , the two personal assistants of Mr Chidambaram, to help the secretary carry out the administrative work, and later the publicity required for the race. Posters on the race were distributed to all schools, colleges, clubs, etc. "The members of the committee had just one 30-minute meeting and each of us carried out the allotted tasks and just reported to MAC on the development", recalls Chandok.

Soon a track was selected at Sholavaram. It was an old airfield, belonging to the Indian Air Force. The track selected was the south and west wings of an L-shaped area. A tight left after the start and a fast right-hander after two U-turns completed the two mile circuit. There were two chicanes, one on each of the straights. For the next few years, this L-shaped track was used for all the races.

Click here for a birds eye view of the airfield as it is today.

The Change to the 'T' Track of Sholavaram  
Being a place that belonged to the Army, the MMSC could not say anything when someone in the army decided to test their new tanks and the Sholavaram runway was taken up by the Army on several occasions to test tanks. Soon the Southern section of the track was chewed up and the surface was ruined quickly by the tanks. This forced MMSC to use the east-west straight and to make it interesting, the Club used a portion of the Northern runway.

This change made it a 'T' shaped track. As a result of this change, the stands were located on the southern side. This gave the spectators a great view of the entire 'T' race track. The time keepers and judges were located on the opposite side - at that time, there were as many as 50 time keepers and 50 lap recorders. In those days, it was difficult to get 100 people for such jobs. Bharat Bhushan had a tough time getting these 100 people. He used to convince many to come to Sholavaram for a picnic with their families!

 J N Patel handled the task of building part of the stands over the concrete runway without making holes. In fact, JNP held charge of the construction department for 25 years. His elder brother Suresh Patel was responsible for framing rules and strictly enforcing them. His younger brother Dr. Prakash Patel set up the mini hospital at the track every year in a dedicated manner and had a great team of doctors to help competitors - he was kept quite busy especially by the two wheelers. The medical centre and pits were located at the north eastern part of the track and the approach was by a narrow road which led to the Sholavaram Dak Bungalow.

This Dak Bungalow was used by many senior officials to stay the night before the races to save time and an hour's drive in the morning of the races which often began at 8.30 am. This was also a popular finishing point for family fun rallies. The start of the northern end of the runway was used as the starting paddock. The southern runway thus gave enough space for car parking and a police outpost to look after over 1000 cops, ticket booths, etc.

Food for thought
The track at Sholavaram also had some non-motoring connections. Whenever there was a shortage of government godowns, the Sholavaram track was used to store wheat. Fortunately the wheat was stacked right in the middle of the 'T' Track. This storing of wheat sorted out a problem. The track was so wide that there were many crashes at the U-turns, especialy the first one after the start on the Western side. The problem was discussed with RAC in London and the Club was advised that the width of the track should not be more than 35 feet. After the wheat was removed, the 150 feet runway was divided by having an eighty feet no-man's land in the centre, with 35 feet wide tracks on two sides. This gave a wide space in the centre and the ambulance, marshalls, etc were all located in the centre 80 feet divide. The result was a difficult corner on the Northwest side - a left corner and a chicane was designed to slow down vehicles before the corner. The northeast corner became very fast and many a vehilce went into no-man's land after crossing the hay bales. Cotton bales were tried but they were too hard for comfort.

The most prestigious stand was at the Northwest corner of the track opposite the chicane and the corners. All along the northern side and next to the time keepers and judges' boxes, the Club built special boxes to accommodate 30 people and sold them to various companies in order to raise funds. A special Chief Guest box was also located here adn the Club had the good fortune to have MGR as their chief guest on more than one occasion. During one of his visits, B I Chandok was asked to look after him. He spoke Tamil in his slang to MGR who in turn spoke in his English slang. There was great fun with him participating in the races and also at the prize distribution in the evening. MGR spoke in Tamil and CT was always the official translator.

... wonderful men in their racing machines!
Can you imagine a stargin grid where there is a Buck Fiat, Chevrolet Studebaker, Cadillac, Standard 10, Fiat, MG, Mercedes 300 SL Coupe, Ferrari V-12, MG Twin Cam, Jaguar Mark V & VII, Fiat Spyder, Truimph TR-3, Austin Healey and a modified Jaguar 2 1/2 litre car? This was the scene when enthusiasts decided to start racing in India.

The old racing fraternity from Madras consisted of Genji Varugis in his MG, Babbaya (K P Ranganatha Rao) in his Citroen special and Babu Mathen in the SIAC special - Mike Satow and Kinny Lal from Calcutta - K Rajagopal, K Sundaram from Coimbatore, N Soundarajan from Dindigul, Maharajah of Gondal, P S Hariharan in his Triumph Jaguar 150, Haji Sattar Sait in his Triumph Jaguar 150, Kumar Siddanna in his MG Twin overhead cam, A D Jayaram in his Jayaram special, Loganathan in a Buck Fiat, Freddie Webb in a Jaguar Mark V, John Webb in a 1952 Chevy with 3 Stromberg carburetors from Bangalore and Palaniappa Chettiar from Salem in his Cadillac Automatic.

The main two-wheeler competitors wer Sheriff Dyan, Bullet Bhasky, P D Sathy and Bose from Madras apart from the regulars like Tyrewala from Bombay and Krishnaswamy from Coimbatore.

International relationships
As the old guard moved out, there was a void which was filled by drivers from Ceylon/ Sri Lanka. The cars had Mike Rauf, David Pieries, Priya Munasinghe and Shanti Gunaratne, while the bikes had Rally & Zacky Dean, U D Jinadasa and Raja Sinathorai, apart from a host of other riders.

Since the races at Sholavaram were normally held during December or early January, the group from Ceylon found it very difficult to get here in time for MMSC races because the ferry service was closed from November to the second week in January. Hence to accommodate the strong Ceylon contingent, the Club decided to shift to the first Sunday in February. Coimbatore and Bangalore also scheduled their races to follow the Madras races at one-week intervals. Thus during February, there were 3 All-India Races - in Madras, Bangalore and Coimbatore. There were even reciprocal arrangements with Sri Lanka and our teams - Maharaj Kumar of Gondal, Nazir Hoosein and Dr. Rossi in his V-12 Ferrari in their cars and Sheriff Dyan, Prithvi Baveja and Bhasky and others in their bikes went to Sri Lanka.

Formula India is born
Since handicap racing had its own problems, it was decided to encourage the building of a Formula India car. The first such car was developed by Kinny Lal and Suresh Kumar from Calcutta around an Ambassador engine and it was called the 'Qumari Special'. Adi Malgam developed a frame around which Vicky Chandok of Madras developed the first indigenous racing car in Madras with a Herald engine. Many ancillary industries like India Radiators, Brakes India, Rane Madras, Gabriel Shock Absorbers, Union Company and Wheels India donated components which helped to keep the cost of the car down. These companies used the race track to test their components.

So many innovations... so many variations...
Suresh Naik of Bombay drove the Teksons Special, Taifar Special, Rolon Special from Coimbatore and many others followed. Special rules were drafted with specifications for a car which could also be used on the road.

Bombay and Coimbatore built the cars with Fiat engines, Calcutta with Ambassador engines and Madras and Bangalore with Herald engines.

The slip up in the permissible weight below 500 kg ruined the concept and though these cars had lights, horns, etc., they could not be used on the roads. The only car that came close to comfort was a car made by TVS in Madurai. However, because the others were much lighter this car was not competitive. All the specials however started the swing to having competitive racing.

The big hero on the racing scene then was the Maharaj Kumar of Gondal in a F5, which was fast and it was a big crowd puller. 'Vicky' Chandok got an Image - Formula Ford and this was the beginning of getting racing cars that would give Indian drivers a chance to get closer to world class. F-2000 was the next jump for Vicky, Karivardhan, Vijay Mallya in F-1 and Akbar Ebrahim. The latter trained here and went on to racing F-3 in UK. Soon he was followed by Narain Karthikeyan and now Karun Chandok .

... and finally
The real improvement to the racing scene was made by the late Karivardhan - He developed the real Indian racing car-engine, but unfortunately did not make this a single make car. Specifications were there but without the single make restriction, the class started tottering. With the sudden death of Kari in a plane crash, this class stagnated till JK Tyres came forward to give tyres to all competitors and this revived the FISSME class because everyone raced on similar tyres.

B Vijaykumar has now developed a single make LG Special and this is a step in the right direction. It is only hoped that the enthusiasm shown by the car manufacturers, especially Maruti Udyog, results in a faster Indian racing car - single make which can set up as a Formula Asia single seater.

The search for a new track
Motor racing in India was synonymous with Sholavaram and should have been continued as such. Unfortunately the Club was caught up with Government bureaucracy and the Club had no choice but to make alternate arrangements.

A search committee in the Club decided to buy 300 acres of land and KVS, JN Patel, Lt. Col. Chowdhary, AJ Bhatia and BI Chandok started the search and finally located the present site.

While plans of estimates for the new track were being drawn up, the seniors and the founders of the Club thought it necessary that a Trust be formed to hold the Club properties. With McDowell and MRF chipping in along wit some others towards advertisements at the track, the work for a new track started.

Gherzi Eastern were appointed architectural consultants, L&T were awarded the construction tender. Gopal Madhavan was requested to supervise the design and construction, which he did with consultation with FIA and FIM to ensure conformation to international rules.

Click here for a birds eye view of the MMST track in Irungattakottai as it is today.