Given the circumstances in which you took over the reins of the FMSCI, what was your first order of business?

R Bharath Raj passed away mid-August, following which, we had a limbo period where we had no president. Only a week before my appointment did the discussion start, and my name was proposed. My first aim was to try and get the whole council working together, working towards the sport. Not in a divided manner, which was evident. And I’m happy to say that in three and a half months now, I have succeeded a fair bit. There is a congenial atmosphere now, both at the council meeting as well as the AGM and it’s been quite good working with the whole council.

It has been almost two years since the FMSCI commission underwent a dramatic and radical overhaul. What sort of progress do you think has been made since then?

Let’s place it on record that while it’s easy to say that Vicky was forced out, as people have talks like that – he chose to step down for reasons best known to him. One side could argue that he knew he’d lose, but he did step down – he never stood for election. I think it has come a long way from there. Maybe there was a lot of bad blood for whatever reasons, unknown to me. I was a councillor when Vicky was president, but not when Prithviraj took over, as our club (WISA) had chosen not to stand.

The Indian Rally Championship has been continuously devoid of title or individual sponsors for the last few years. Why do you think rallying has failed to attract the crowds or the marketing budgets from corporates?

I really wish I had the answer to this, as rallying is my passion. I learnt everything in rallying and it is something very close to my heart. Anyway, if we go a bit back in time when Bharath Raj’s IMG Sport tied up with Annabelle Manwaring’s PSP (Pro Sports Promotion) and they took the title sponsorship for three years, they took it for some phenomenal prices for that time. They were bidding a crore a year just for title rights! We hadn’t heard of that kind of money in the sport.

This money was used to support the clubs for events, to the tune of Rs 15-20 lakh per event.

This took rallying to new heights, entries were up, quality of events improved and so on. But the downside, and I can say this in hindsight, was that it killed the appetite of organisers finding their own sponsors. So most clubs got spoilt and when that contract ended, they never came back to bid again as Speed (Bharat Petroleum) decided to withdraw from sponsorship. The clubs felt lost and were unable to raise the money themselves. Then as this huge chunk of money was sitting with FMSCI, they started funding clubs – Rs 5-10 lakh a club or so. Once again, clubs got used to this so the money ran out very fast. Last year (2015) was the first year that the clubs ran without any support from the FMSCI as it couldn’t afford to support them anymore! But we still managed to run a fantastic Nashik Rally and the season finale at Chikmagalur (Asia Cup Round) was one of the best events India has seen and unsurprisingly, it has been granted the status of a full APRC event for 2016.

For 2016, we are hoping to put together a strong calendar of 5-6 events, including the Asia Pacific round at Chikmagalur. We have a new rally Commission Chairman, Ashwin Pandit, and we are hopeful of getting some sort of title sponsorship for the 2016 season. It may not be huge, but every bit helps and lack of money in the event is very evident in rallying. So overall, I am quite optimistic that the season will turn out to be good. We are considering, for example, shorter events – like one or two days. The budget for events won’t be halved but it will still translate in a significant savings of maybe Rs 4-5 lakh an event. Rallying definitely has great potential, with cars that people can identify with.