The fast and the curious

He's 21, loves speed but practises mindfulness. Indianorigin racer Yuven Sundaramoorthy is changing what motorsports can do

- Noor Anand Chawla 

Yuven Sundaramoorthy got excited about racing on a trip to China.

In American open-wheel car racing, it doesn't get bigger than the IndyCar Series. And within IndyCar, perhaps no racer is as keenly watched on the other side of the world as Yuven Sundaramoorthy. The 21 year-old won IndyCar's Road to Indy Program in 2022, becoming the first racer of Indian descent to do so. This year, he competes in the 2024 Firestone Indy NXT Series, which runs until September. It's closer to the legendary Indy 500, the holy grail of racing, than any Brown participant has ever been.

Indians have made their mark in sports as diverse as ice hockey, baseball and fencing. They haven't yet made their presence felt in competitive motorsports. Wisconsin-born Sundaramoorthy says he was drawn to it as a child. When his family briefly lived in China, he watched the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix and recalls being "immediately hooked". He made good on that obsession when he returned to the US, taking go-karting lessons to hone his driving skills.