Easy riders
Karun and Vicky Chandhok. Together, they are the country's most influential racing family
Then Karun Chandhok started racing, he could easily have been a victim of the “racing driver dad syndrome". The phenomenon would be more familiar to followers of tennis, which has equivalent versions in Steffi Graf’s father Peter, Jelena Dokic’s dad Damir and Andre Agassi’s father Emmanuel—they all drove their children pretty hard.
Karun’s father Vicky Chandhok, having carried forward his own father’s driving legacy, did not sit on the sidelines and scream at his successor. Instead, he took a step back and trusted his son with his decisions. “He was trying to survive as a driver, which was critical," says Vicky. “We had our fair share of humour when my younger son (Suhail) used to tease me with ‘Here comes the coach’. The humour aside, the path was clearly carved out and the rungs of the ladder were quite well defined," Vicky adds.
That was over a decade ago.
The two men sit next to each other at the Mars premier room in the Sahara Star hotel in Mumbai, hours before they have to catch a flight to Chennai, where they live. They travel “insanely"—Karun says that from the age of 18, he has done a hundred flights a year, averaging a trip every three days.
Theirs is a relationship of understanding, of two men who have journeyed together, both literally and philosophically, towards one common goal—of making Karun the best racing driver possible.
“When I arrived for my first F1 race, a friend told me: ‘Everyone here either wants to make money off you, is a crook, liar or a thief. Ninety per cent are one of these; so put a label.’ It may not be 90%, but it is largely true. Wherever there’s money, there are sharks."
Karun had just turned 18 in 2002 when he moved to England to chase his dreams: from a city of 4.3 million in Chennai to a town of 12,000 in Brackley (which is close to Silverstone, the venue for the British Grand Prix). He had skipped college and decided he wanted to be a race driver, at a time when F1 racing was still almost an illusion in India (Narain Karthikeyan is the only other Indian to have raced in F1). Karun says his father stayed with him for three weeks in the UK, set up the place with the help of assembled Ikea furniture, tried some cooking and left him to find his own way.
Though Karun’s decision to skip college was not a shock to Vicky, he didn’t see it coming. He also never wanted to get involved in the administration of the sport. “It’s not easy to give 90% of your free time to do something for free. But it’s exciting trying to manoeuvre the Indian way of thinking to align globally," Vicky says.
Karun says, laughing, that the only time they have a difference of opinion is when “he wants to raise money by mortgaging our house with another bank, mortgaging my grandfather’s house, aunt’s house…."
He adds: “His Punjabi brain kicks in, to earn ₹ 10, he will spend ₹ 100. I have half a TamBrahm brain from my mother Chitra, which will help me rein him back in. She brings us back to earth."
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