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IT TAKES THE STUFFING OUT OF you. 60 minutes. I have ridden for longer stints. I have raced at the track a couple of times before. Never have I done both at the same time. Neither has Alameen. Both of us were unaware of the challenges that come with an endurance race. Heck, we didn’t have an inkling of how to plan our rider changes or who our partners were going to be. We just knew that it was going to be a tough ordeal. Endurance racing?

Like 24 Hours of Le Mans or 8 Hours of Suzuka, Suzuki India had called us to take part in a 60 minute race where we would be paired up with another journo to race their Gixxer Cup bikes. The venue would be the Kari Motor Speedway as our race would play a support race to the second round of the 2018 JK Tyre National Racing Championship. I had a slight edge over Alameen given that I had ridden the Gixxer Cup bike earlier but that was again a couple of years ago. Alameen had a huge weight advantage over me; something that he thought would come into play in the race (sadly, it didn’t).

The rules were fairly simple. There had to be a mandatory rider switch in place. No rider could ride for more than 25 minutes in a single stretch. No bike change, no refuelling, no repair work. If your partner crashed out, your race ends there. The average time of both partners would be taken as our qualifying time for the team and grid slots would be decided so.