Welcome to the fourth edition of our Podcast series „Ten Questions with...“ on VSCAracing.com. Today we’re coming to you with our Easter holiday edition of the podcast series. We hope all of you had a wonderful time with your family and loved ones on Easter.

VSCAracing.com: I’m joined today by Blackdove Racing driver Rohit Garikipati of the No. 438 Dallara P217 Prototype. Rohit joined the VSCA SportsCar Championship with Blackdove Racing back in January and is 18 years old and one of the younger stars of the series. Welcome Rohit, thanks for joining us today!

Rohit Garikipati: Thank you for having me!

V: It’s certainly great to have you here with us today. So, let’s get started. Maybe let’s start talking a little about the season start you guys have had at Blackdove Racing. It looks like you guys had a rough start to the season with a DNF at Daytona and a P18 finish at Sebring. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

R: Yeah, so obviously no one wants to start off the season with a DNF and pretty much a last place finish. But unfortunately for us at Daytona, we had and engine failure pretty early in the race. That put us back with 40-something minutes of repairs and then at that point, we didn’t really see any point to continuing.

And then at Sebring, it was more technical issues. I think we had one small contact that put us a lap down, but then with the full course yellow we were able to get that lap back. But halfway through my second stint in the car I had a Chrome popup that blocked my entire screen and I instinctively hit the brake going into “Tower” but I think there was a GT behind me who didn’t expect me to do that and just plowed into the side of us and gave us another 20 minutes of repairs. That put us pretty much out of any contention for the race.

V: Oh, I seem to remember that incident, actually. I think it was the No. 76, the Porsche from NReSports, who were the race winners at Daytona. So they had a rough race as well at Sebring. So a shoutout to them at this point here.

R: Yeah, it definitely wasn’t the plan that we’ve had when we started in the championship. We were actually on pace for a top ten finish at Sebring but after that our race was pretty much stuck in 18th, just trying to run laps.

V: As a follow-up on that, with Laguna Seca we’ve got the first Sprint Cup race of the season coming up. Does the approach change for you guys in any way, as a team and what are your goals for the championship?

R: I think, definitely after Sebring, my team-mate that I’m running most races with and my team manager Stephen and I, we had a pretty long conversation and we actually looked through the results and average lap times and we saw we were on pace for probably a top-five, at Sebring at least and we realized if we’re just able to keep our incidents down [sic: we should be okay].

It’s not like we got involved in any incidents that were unavoidable, like somebody spinning in front of us. They were all unforced errors, for the most part, that we had.

So, if we just figure out a way to minimize those, then we hopefully get better results. Especially, like you said, with the Sprint Cup coming up, it’s basically like the start of a new championship and we can really focus on having a set of clean races that we finish much better.

Rohit Garipikati and the No. 438 Dallara team of Blackdove Racing have had a difficult start to the season, thanks to incidents like this at Sebring.

Because, at this point, even though there are two Endurance Cup races left, they are much shorter than the other two. I think it’s Watkins Glen and Petit Le Mans, the two shorter endurance races, so there will not be as many points able to be scored. Not as much can be done there.

But with the Sprint Cup, it’s a fresh championship, so we pretty much take it with the idea of a new championship and Stephen and I, we’ve been practicing a lot for Laguna Seca and hopefully we’ll be able to avoid the mistakes that we’ve made before.

V: Outside of sim racing, what is your biggest passion in life or what keeps you busy between races?

R: Obviously, I’m a student. But besides that, I swim competitively at a pretty high level. I swim pretty much at the national level in the United States. So that takes up a lot of my time. I think we spend 19 to 20 hours per week training. So, it takes up a lot of my time.

V: Wow, that’s amazing So, for how long have you been doing that?

R: I started swimming, just with the intention to learn how to swim and how to stay safe in the water when I was three. But I really started to swim competitively about ten years ago for the team that I’m with right now. And I’ve loved it ever since. It teaches you great skills, like how to stay safe in the water but it also helped me develop as a person and work on a team.

V: Is there anything you can take from swimming and apply to racing? Is there anything that helped you improve on the racetrack, out there?

R: I guess one thing that has helped me is just the general idea of patience. Because, when I started off swimming I was nowhere near the fastest. But again, I’ve been swimming competitively for around ten years. I didn’t start off as the best, but just always putting in the work, always putting in the hard work, always going to the practice, always showing up doing what’s expected of you and doing a little bit more – that’s always helped me get to a higher level.

And I think even doing that in sim racing [sic: it’s helped me]. I don’t really do it [sic: sim racing] for anybody, except myself. But even still, knowing I can just practice for 30 minutes, but then realizing: No, if I want to get better at this [sic: I got to do more sometimes]. I like doing things to the best of my ability.

So, to put in that extra time, have the patience, that it might not click right now, but if you keep up the hard work, it will eventually click, I think that’s the big thing I’ve taken away from swimming, not just for sim racing but for life in general. Patience really pays off in the long game.

V: Do you think you might leave sim racing behind and do swimming professionally in the future?

R: I think with the level that I’m at right now, it would be incredibly tough. I am looking at swimming at the collegiate level but as of right now, there is nothing higher than that for me. Because, to be able to swim at the professional level, you have to be top two per event in the country. There are only 16 events in swimming and the events that I swim, I only swim three of them. So I’d have to be one in six, pretty much.

Unless something crazy happens in the next four or six years, unfortunately I don’t see myself swimming professionally in the future.

V: What got you started in sim racing and how did sim racing change your perspective on motorsports in general?

R: I’m sure, like a lot of people, I love racing. I’ve loved pretty much any machines ever since I was very young. But there was just something about cars that speaks to me on a different level. So I’ve always loved racing.

I’ve unfortunately never had the chance to try myself in karts. Of course I’ve gone to a rental place, but I’ve never had the chance to have an actual season in go karts; just because of the expenses and whatnot.

So I decided, rather than doing that I would turn to sim racing, because sim racing, as we know, is a lot more accessible to everyone. And you can do it whenever you want. You don’t need to adhere to a schedule, necessarily. You can drive anything anytime anywhere you want. And that just really attracted me.

When it really took off for me, I started off playing F1 2012 on keyboard and mouse but eventually a few years later I upgraded to a controller for the F1 games and then finally in about 2019 I got my first wheel. That kind of sat around until the whole world shut down in the pandemic and then I started grinding out TCR in RaceRoom, because there was this event, that if you qualify in the top 100, you get to do some special invitational race, that I really wanted to do.

But I found out very quickly that you have to be pretty much a pro sim racer to reach that top 100 level.

V: Would you describe yourself as a very competitive person? What do you do to unwind, to balance things out a little?

R: Like I said earlier, when I do something, I usually do it with the intend of doing it to the best of my ability. Because if you truly love something, you should put 100% of your effort into it.

Yeah, I’m pretty competitive. But to unwind, I actually turn to sim racing and that was actually one of the reasons I was drawn to VSCA. It’s because, yes it is competitive, but it’s not competitive at the eSports level.

I mean, when you look at the eSports guys, these guys are putting in hundreds of hours a week just to find maybe a tenth at one track. Whereas here, I’m able to put in 20-30 hours a week – or not even, like a few hours a week – and I’m generally able to be at the pace of the people who run in this league.

Just being able to have a little bit of practice, but being able to still have fun when I’m out on track that’s not hyper competitive; that little bit of competition is there and it’s enough to keep me interested, but it’s not enough to the point where I feel like I have to try really hard and then I get burnt out from it. So, sim racing definitely helps me unwind from all the competitiveness in swimming and in my life in general.

V: What is on your current playlist? What kind of music do you like to listen to?

R: I like to think that I’ve got a very varied music taste. Some days I like to listen to EDM. Some days I like to listen to Country. The group AJR, it’s a group of three American brothers; I was listening to them a few years ago and I kind of stopped listening to them for some reason. But I very recently rediscovered them and I rediscovered the love I have for them. So I have been listening to them a lot more as of recently. Country and EDM are very often featured on my playlist.

V: Your name is rather unique. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your family background?

R: My family is from India and I absolutely love the traditions that come from there. I love being able to say like “Yes, I am not just American. I’m Indian. There’s a little bit more to me.”

I’ve been fortunate enough to visit India quite a few times in my life. There is so much family, there is so much history there. It is very nice knowing that there is something unique compared to what most people have.

V: If you had to pick one thing that you love and one thing you love about sim racing, what would those two things be?

R: I think one thing that I absolutely love about sim racing is the ability that it has to bring people together. Like, I have team-mates from all over the country, all over the world actually.

Rohit Garikipati celebrates after winning the Michigan State Championship in the 1650 yard freestyle in the summer of 2021

These people, that I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to meet and actually hang out with, if I hadn’t done sim racing. It’s just incredible. You could be racing against someone who lives halfway across the world and you could be centimeters off them on the track, as long as net code allows you to be.

But I think just that ability to be connected to someone so far away and have some of the most intense battles in sim racing.

There was one battle I had in a longer race. It was like an hour-long race. We were within a second the entire race and after that we became friends. So, just the ability that sim racing has to bring people together, is something that I absolutely love about it.

But then one thing I don’t like about it is: Many people take the overly aggressive approach to it. You’ve got people who think “Oh yeah, it’s just a game. I can do whatever I want.” So, you get people who take Senna’s “If you no longer go for a gap, you’re no longer a racing driver.” quote and take that to the extreme.

If there is even the tiniest gap – I just saw a clip the other day – there was not even a car’s width and this guy goes into the grass to do the overtake and then he causes a big crash. And he says “Oh there was a gap. I had to go for it, because I’m a racing driver.”

And I think that kind of attitude – it’s always “Go, go, go, go, go!” is something that really can drive a community down, because it causes accidents and it just makes the racing less fun.

V: Just to follow up on that. When you look at the two races we’ve had so far this season, was there a moment that stands out to you in particular, where you say “That was awesome.” and you had a lot of fun?

R: I wouldn’t say particularly there is anything that stands out, because of the less-than-optimal start to the season that we’ve had. But I think just the overall quality of racing, especially with the way that the regulations are set up in VSCA – for example the high-risk corners – I think that really promotes much safer, much more gentleman racing as the league has been designed to have.

V: I kind of had to chuckle there a little bit, because the “high-risk corners” obviously, as you probably know, have been one of the most talked-about items and issues in the league since the start of the season. I know there have been more than enough different opinions on the matter. So, that’s quite funny that you mention this...

R: Actually, If I can say just one more thing about that. I remember when I first read the regulations and saw “non-passing corners” I was very angry, because I was like “What are they doing? They’re trying to manufacturer racing. They’re trying to prevent us from passing people in corners!”

But when you actually read through it, you realize it was actually designed to make the racing safer and racing more clean, so you don’t end up sending it on the inside of someone in a very risky corner, causing like a ten-car pileup. I think with that, in the back of your head: “Oh, I can’t overtake here. I’ve got to stay safe for this race.” is just so much better.

V: Who’s your favorite racing driver and how did you come to be a fan of them?

R: I started watching F1 in the 2014 season. For four seasons before that, Sebastian Vettel had won the world championship; very solidly; very emphatically – especially in 2013.

[sic: I just really liked] his attitude towards racing. He was on a nin-race winning streak in 2013, when he said something like: “We have to remember these days. There is no guarantee that they will last forever.”

He is a very live-in-the-moment kind of person. And especially, now his very forward thinking, how he is looking for change in the world, change for the better.

I just think that kind of attitude really makes him seem to be much more enjoyable.

Then, apart from F1, I quite like Alexander Rossi in IndyCar. He’s had a bit of a rough run these past few seasons. But I’m hoping that he can return to his old ways and hopefully win in Indy this year again.

V: From my personal perspective as a German, that’s way cool to hear an American say, they are fan of a German racing driver. Way to go there! (laughing). I’m a little bit biased there...

With that, we’re already at the end of this episode of “Ten Questions with...”. Thank you so much Rohit, for your time. Do you have anything else, that you want to say, before we wrap things up?

R: Not really. Just that I’m very much looking forward to Laguna Seca and I’m hoping that it will go better than the first two rounds of the season.

V: Yeah, we wish you and your team best of luck, obviously with the No. 438 Dallara. For everybody else, that is reading: We appreciate you checking us out! We hope you tune in on April 23rd when we will live stream (no commentary) the Monterey Sports Car Challenge, Round 3 of the VSCA SportsCar Championship 2022 on the VSCA YouTube channel.

There will be no live commentary on the live stream, but still it will give you a chance to follow all the racing action live. There will also be live scoring and timing.

Rohit, thanks so much once again for joining us today! I really appreciate you taking the time. And once again, good luck for the next race!

Everybody else: We’ll see you next time!