Shredded tyres, whistling turbochargers, and straight-piped cars hitting the rev-limiters—what more does a car enthusiast need? Few supercars going head to head? Definitely. We took a trip down to the popular Valley Run that is held on the airstrip at the Aamby Valley City, near Lonavala, and had a whole lot of fun over the three days. Here is our story.
We were accorded a welcome by clouds of smoke arising from the drifting arena by JK Tyre where Sanam Sekhon, India’s very own DK—Drift King (get the Tokyo drift reference?) was going sideways in his Lexus GS300 along with the guys from Bad Boi Drifts that put on a great show inside the closed track with their Mercedes and BMW sedans. Also on display were JK Tyre’s very own Maruti Suzuki Balenos that we will talk about later. There was a showcase of Gautam Singhania’s drift-spec cars as well. Those included a Nissan Silvia S15 and a Nissan 240SX, among others.
Diving into the drag races, it was a beautiful Marina Bay Blue BMW M5 F90, driven by Vicky Sawant, that crossed the quarter-mile in an impressive 9.971 seconds; the fastest car at this year’s Valley Run and for good reason. This particular M5 was tuned by Mushabbar Lakadwala of Super Car Club Garage and was pushing close to 1,000 hp with full weight. Behind the beemer in the “Unrestricted Class” was the Audi RS6, tuned by TuneOTronics and driven by Uday Ramachander, that clocked a 10.2-second quarter mile.
The fastest diesel car at The Valley Run was a BMW X3, driven by Vikram Walia. He took the 1.8-tonne SUV over the finish with a time of 12.37 seconds. The car was tuned by ModmycarIndia and E-Tuners Greece. The fastest tuned Indian car of the event was a Škoda Octavia vRS, tuned by Venom Performance India and piloted by Roshan Reddy, that clocked in a good 11.712 seconds.
Coming to cars with engine swaps, it was a Volkswagen Polo, which had a 2.0-litre TSI engine and an all-wheel-drive (AWD) system swapped into it by team N1 Racing and tuned by APR Performance, that crossed the 400 metres in 11.623 seconds at first place.
In this ever-growing format of racing in India, it should not be surprising that the women of the sport were equally fast, if not faster than most. The fastest woman driver in an Indian car was Uvashri Kannadasan Balajeyanthi who took her Venom Performance tuned Škoda Octavia 1.8 TSI AWD to a very impressive 11.989 seconds over the quarter-mile. The fastest woman driver in a foreign car was Shreya Singh who took her McLaren 720S to a 10.897-second quarter-mile.
Honourable mentions in the “Unrestricted Class” include the very famous Nissan GT-R of Imran Majid, tuned by Kikshift, that put down a 10.65-second time, followed by the Audi R8 V10 with twin turbos, tuned by Modcrew and Venom Performance, driven by Sean Rogers that clocked in a 10.779-second time and then the sleeper looking Audi S5 in District Green colour that covered the quarter mile in 11.134 seconds, driven by Vivan Bhathena.
Coming to the JK Tyre’s stunt Balenos, there was a special show on the final day where they were put to good use, being driven over a one-sided ramp and then on the side wheels alone. On the final day, there was a supercar rally and a visit by Yohan Poonawalla showcasing a few of his exotic, vintage, and luxury cars that ranged from a mid-1960s Lincoln Continental to a Ferrari F12 Berlinetta that attracted a lot of attention.
There were some noteworthy builds we witnessed at The Valley Run as well, starting with a Suzuki G16B swapped Fiat 118NE, a turbocharged Honda City Type 2, a BMW 3 Series drift car with a manual gearbox swap, and a lifted Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.
Story: Charan Karthik
