It was Tata Motors that ushered in truck racing in 2014 as an annual event where its Prima range would roar on the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida as crowds cheered on. Today, for all practical purposes, the T1 Prima Truck Racing Championship has been put on hold with the company looking at alternative options to improve driver dignity. The last race took place in March 2017.

“Driving is a difficult profession, which is looked down upon. Truck racing was one of the initiatives to engage with the driver and public at large,” says Girish Wagh, President, Commercial Vehicle Business Unit.

While T1 is now in cold storage, Tata Motors is focussing on other initiatives focussed on driver dignity like training, scholarships for children and free medical check-ups. It was also a couple of weeks ago when the company emerged principal sponsor for the Wrestling Federation of India.

As Wagh says, wrestling has brought “the maximum medals for the country” but hardly has any sponsors. As a sport, it has attributes like strength, agility and durability, which are synonymous with Tata commercial vehicles.

“We saw good alignment with wrestling and decided to get into that arena along with doing something for that sport,” says Wagh. Clearly, the idea is to go beyond Prima truck racing and explore what makes “larger sense for the overall brand and all the stakeholders”.

This also puts in context the company’s association as a team sponsor in the Pro Kabaddi League last year. As Wagh says, truck racing helped reach out to a “particular number of stakeholders” while some of the engagements “we are now doing will enable us to reach out to a larger number”.

He reiterates that truck racing is a property that Tata Motors owns and it is up to the company to decide when it wants to revive the concept. “Racing made sense then and today we can bring more dignity through other means while doing it better, faster and on a larger scale,” says Wagh.

As he makes clear, T1 is merely in pause mode at this point and not shelved. Within industry circles, the story going around is that the concept was scrapped because it was perceived as a costly exercise especially at a time when the truck industry was virtually down and out. There is no question that it played a part in brand-building for the Prima range especially with dealers and potential customers present in drives at the Buddh International Circuit. Now with the industry firing on all cylinders, it will be interesting to see if T1 will make a comeback. Going by what Wagh says, this could wait now and may not happen in a hurry.

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