Hyderabad’s motorsport scene may have been shy on the accelerator, but it just got a turbo boost. The Hyderabad Motorsports Club, that was formed last December by motorsport enthusiast Liaqat Ali, recently took part in Mumbai’s Roaring Champions drag racing championship, and ended up winning the most number of trophies by any group there.
The two-day, night-time, quarter-mile drag racing event was the first of its kind in the country, and saw multiple race divisions, ranging from 100cc to 2000cc for bikes and 1000cc to 6000cc for cars. “We won seven prizes in all the categories we participated in,” says Liaqat, “Even in the 600cc foreign bike category, which was the toughest category we faced, we took the first three positions”
Liaqat himself took part on the P3 Cruiser, winning the category on his Harley Davidson Forty-Eight cruiser. “We bagged more prizes than other teams from Mumbai or Bengaluru,” he added. “Professional racer, Gautam Singhania said it was good to see people from Hyderabad winning and praised us” Training for the races, however, proved to be problematic, with the city’s lack of tracks, forcing the group to leave for the event early just to get valuable track time. “We don’t have practise grounds and tracks for drag racing in Hyderabad, so we prepared ourselves theoretically
here,” Liaqat said.
The group first contested in January in 2015, when they took part in Lonavla’s The Valley Run, and are looking to get Hyderabadi youngsters racing off the street and on the tracks.
Organising rides and meetings every few weeks, the group is also backed by a company called Biking Brotherhood, that sponsors their safety equipment. “If the Government allows us to use the Begumpet Airport to train, we’d be very thankful, because it has a very good tarmac,” said Liaqat who hopes to organise racing events soon.
