CHENNAI: With the ongoing lockdown keeping them away from the tracks, many racers have been forced to go virtual to satisfy their need for speed. Some of them are using that to help the fight against the coronavirus.
This newspaper had earlier reported how many of India’s top racers had taken to racing in virtual racing events during the downtimes. The race weekends had been organised under the banner of Ultimate E, the e-sports outfit run by racers Armaan Ebrahim and Aditya Patel. Now their fourth weekend saw some of India’s high profile racers come together to raise money for Seeds, a charity that provides for healthcare workers in the frontline of the coronavirus fight.
“This is something we had on our minds when we started this,” said Patel. “We just wanted to figure out the best way to implement this and the best time to do it. When it started to grow, we thought this would be best to have a charity event. Considering it was in the plan from the beginning, to actually implement it wasn’t so difficult.”
People who turned up online in order to view the action were asked to donate to the cause, with the link for donations provided on the page. To attract as big an audience as they possibly could, the organisers tweaked around with the format, with a PubG tournament preceding the virtual racing events. That was followed by racing events, one of which featured international participants from South Africa, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Among the big names to participate in support of the cause was India’s first Formula One racer Narain Karthikeyan. “Narain was always keen on doing it,” said Patel. “He just wanted to watch for a couple of weeks how it turned out and then, by the third race weekend, he was onboard with us. Right from the time we started, he had told us that he was keen to be a part of it. The only thing that was holding back was the fact that he doesn’t have very good equipment. He also hadn’t planned on doing this, so he’s stuck with some equipment that is not really ideal.”
Also on hand were racers like former F2 drivers Arjun Maini and his younger brother Kush, Karthik Tharani, Advait Deodhar, Muhammed Ibrahim and Chetan Korada. Ibrahim won the overall title with victories in the first two races while Kush ran him close, winning races three and four.
Patel said that they were yet to get the final figures on how much money they had managed to raise, but stressed that Ultimate E would be coming back again during the weekend with another event.