Amidst the scorching heat of the 2010 summer, a new type of motorsport event was born – referred to by Northern Motorsport as the Summer Sprint. Well, the Summer Sprint was back, new and improved for 2011 – although it should likely have been called the Monsoon Challenge.

The Summer Sprint is rallyings equivalent of a 20-20 cricket match. The event is short and sweet. You show up with your rally car early on a Sunday morning, pass a safety inspection, and head to a thus far undisclosed track not too far from the city center to test your mettle with some of the best rally drivers in the country – well, the northern half of the country anyway.

The track was a 4.6 kilometer narrow, winding, and very challenging ribbon of dirt through a private complex of farms just off the Greater Noida Expressway. After two rounds to get a sense of the many left and right 90-degree bends, it was time to line up – individually, at one minute intervals – for the start. The event was broken up into two main categories – two and four-wheel drive vehicles – and two sub categories each thereafter based on engine size. We were there in the autoX rally Gypsy, which recently saw some action at the SJOBA rally in the hands of our International Editor, Anniruddha Jain.

Now, I haven’t had the chance to do a competitive event since the Summer Sprint last year, so I was more than a little rusty to begin with – not to mention the Gypsy, which, having been through several Raid-de-Himalaya’s, has seen better days! And the weather conditions didn’t exactly help to begin with. Just as the first few cars set off, we were interrupted by an absolute deluge – as if the Rain Gods didn’t approve of our chosen form of Sunday motorsport. And while the rain abated after about a half an hour, it meant that navigating the track at speed was going to be even more hairy than before – with no run off area on either side of the track whatsoever if you get it wrong. Yes, it was tight and twisty, but it was also extremely fast in several places – allowing you to engage 5th gear more than once, while averaging well above 100km/h over the 4.6 kilometers.

Sunny Sidhu took the fastest time by a country mile in his Desert Storm winning V6 Suzuki Grand Vitara – 4 minutes & 15 seconds. The other Vitara’s in the event failed to make an impression, leaving the Gypsy’s to fight it out for the remaining positions. In the closely contested 4WD 1,300cc category, Amanpreet Ahluwalia took first place with a time of 4 minutes & 22 seconds, Aabhishek Mishra took second with 4 minutes 23, and Randeep Miglani and I shared third place with 4 minutes 24.

Summer Sprint 2011 was a great event once again, and if you’d like to see an on-board run through this incredible stage, in HD, check out the www.youtube.com/autoxtv