At the age of 16, while most of us are still daydreaming, Lee Keshav decided to pursue his dream after being fascinated by the speed and thrill of Formula 1. He chose the road less travelled and started his journey by founding his own App design firm to fund his passion for racing.
A few years down the road, Keshav’s determination has paid off after making the right noises in national championships, including the Volkswagen Motorsport Polo Cup and the National Championship in the Formula Ford 160, before also trying his hand in the International fold at MRF Challenge Championship.
As the 30-year-old puts it, he is an entrepreneur on weekdays and a motorhead on weekends. After being forced to put his racing career on the backburner due to the economics of the sport, Keshav decided to move in a completely different direction as he pursued his entrepreneurial journey full throttle.
Now, he’s looking to make a comeback into racing yet again, to chase the dreams a young boy from Delhi had seen. In an exclusive chat with News18.com, Lee Keshav talks how he juggled between a career as the Creative Head of Rush Gaming Universe and his passion behind the wheel. He also gave an insight on the competitive world of racing, and how a teenager from Delhi prepared himself to race alongside the likes of Freddie Hunt, and Mathias Lauda.
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How did you get the idea of starting your own app design firm and when did you first realize you wanted to be a racer?
Every boy or every girl growing up, we’re always inspired to do something incredible and then life happens. I also grew up like this, discovering F1 on TV randomly one day I was just fascinated, I was looking at the screen and I’m wondering what is happening. That’s how the curiosity grew, I saw the F1 cars and I had that dream that I wanted to be like them.
Back then I didn’t know that you don’t have to be 18 to start racing when I realized that I was like ‘Oh my god’ I’m late, what can I do now? I remember there was a training programme, it was like Rs 50,000 to start with, so I realized I had to make my own money and that’s how the entrepreneurial journey began.
This was in 2010, the internet was there but the facilities were nowhere close to what they are now. I did a lot of digging, I did a lot of research, and I kept gathering information. I grew up watching Michael Schumacher, and later on, I watched Narain Karthikeyan in F1, it was very inspirational. So first Karthikeyran and then Karun Chandhok. By this time I was almost in racing so I understood a lot more. We briefly had a team in F1 the Force India which did really well so I never imagined that F1 would come to India.
So how did the young boy from Delhi prepare himself to cut his teeth with some of the biggest names in the racing fraternity, if you could give us an insight into your journey?
For me the biggest discovery was that you need to be really fit; fitness is absolutely important just to drive a race car, let alone driving it well. Fitness is the most basic qualification, you need to keep a check on your physical fitness and your mental stress. Sometimes when you’re under physical stress, your mind also struggles. We do a lot of mental prep, through meditation and then Yoga is such a big thing in high-intensity sports, it helps us control our breathing. At different stages of my career, I incorporated all of them including doing some specific exercises for the neck.
You’ve managed to work on the weekdays and race on the weekends, how did you manage to juggle the two very different spheres of life?
I think it’s all about inspiration and drive. I’m a normal person as well, I also get lazy all the time, what worked out for me was that these two things are so different. After a long day of work if you go for a cricket game it’s the same as that. It’s a detox from work, so that’s one thing how it works.
And of course, sometimes you have to make sacrifices in life, so in the start-up industry, I learnt that the 9-5 concept just doesn’t work. I have always been surrounded by very high energy, in sports you have to give it your all, so sometimes it’s painful. But you have to achieve a lot in your 20s and your 30s, it’s just natural inspiration, the desire to race makes me work harder on weekdays because this success then leads to racing and then it’s a full circle.
After you managed to find your feet in the world of racing, you took a break and then decided to go full throttle behind the entrepreneurial side of things…
One of the biggest discoveries was that everything is a business at the end of the day. Unfortunately in India, it’s very difficult to raise sponsorships. I raced at the highest level in India, I won at the highest level. But the next step in Europe or somewhere is 10 times more expensive. A lot of drivers get stuck here, and then they eventually burn out. So I felt I can either keep doing this, and eventually burn out either way or I can start early, and create a path to racing.
You also had the opportunity to drive with Sachin Tendulkar, what was the experience like and what chat did you guys have while he was behind the wheel?
That was one of my best days, I was doing a promotional event with BMW and suddenly they surprise us and Sachin shows up. He’s a huge fan of racing, he’s been very passionate about cars. We got into the car, he took me for a ride, I’m a racecar driver and I’m scared to sit with anyone but he was so well, I could then relax and I understood he knows what he’s doing.
The best part was he asked me ‘Hey what do you think? Where can I improve?’, while we were driving I was giving him some tips and at his level, he could have said I don’t want your tips but he was actually adapting very quickly. That’s the mind of an athlete, and within five minutes his process of approaching some turns had changed. He was instantly faster. He even told me some stories of his with Michael Schumacher.
Life has come full circle for you, from starting off with racing to then chasing your career in the business side of things, you’re now looking to leave a mark behind the wheel again?
Next year I’m planning to do a full championship, the preparations and training are underway. Very soon I’ll be testing some race cars from Formula 2. That will be the baseline to figure out which championship to take part in. I’m planning to do a big jump and start racing internationally and basically resume where I left off.
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