From the silver screen to the racing track

After three podiums in four races this season, Ajith Kumar says the team is also eyeing GT3

- Renuka Kirpalani

It's a cool, sunny day in May at the Misano race track on the east coast of Italy. The air is alive with the sound of cars blasting down the straight at practice sessions for the Creventic 24h Series, an FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) approved endurance racing series that features GT3 and GT4 cars, sports cars and silhouette cars. The calendar consists of 12- and 24-hour races, which test the endurance of the drivers and the vehicles on Formula 1 tracks in Europe, with one race in Dubai. While the series has been around a while, it hasn't seen the audience frenzy of this season before. Fans are thronging races to see Tamil megastar Ajith Kumar.

Pulling his helmet off, Thala, as he is known to fans, breaks into a boyish grin: "I don't know, I just drove my pants off. How did I do?" In that moment, I catch a glimpse of the superstar charm as well as of a racer determined to prove himself.

Why is the 54-year-old actor at a race track, recovering from crashes and trying to better his timing, instead of basking in the success of his latest blockbuster, Good Bad Ugly (April 2025)? "I always wanted to be a race car driver. It's an expensive sport, and my parents used to say, 'Do it when you can afford it yourself.' Now, by the grace of God, I can now pursue it on my own terms," says Ajith, who debuted his team, Ajith Kumar Racing, earlier this year.

Endurance racing internationally has only seen one Indian team competing before, comprising of Narain Karthikeyan, Arjun Maini and Naveen Rao at the 2021 Asian Le Mans Series in Dubai. Last week, Karthikeyan, India's first F1 driver, and Formula BMW Series driver Aditya Patel joined Ajith's team for the Asian Le Mans series next year.