With arms folded, and leaning against the aubergine Aston, is our Editor-in-Chief and part-time racer, Dhruv Behl, who has the responsibility of setting the lap times for all the four-wheel contenders. His racing resume includes podiums in both rallying and racing – in everything from the Raid-de-Himalaya to the MRF Formula 1600 single-seater series. Resting on the Kawasaki is the King of Wheelies, Karan Mathur. Flanking the Ferrari are Ashish Jha, Shivank Bhatt, Manav Sinha and Ishan Raghava. In front of the RE is Aakash Paul and sitting on the Seal is Naveen Soni. Our car and bike juries are made up of five members each of this eight member team, with Shivank and Manav doubling up on both juries. Our full team of experienced road testers have over a century of cumulative experience in evaluating cars and bikes, and they bring this skill to the fore in our annual mega-test to tell you what’s what in no uncertain terms. As explained previously, we score each machine on a range of parameters ranging from quality, comfort, ride and handling, refinement, design, practicality, value-for-money and, of course, X-factor and lap-time.

How we evaluate the lap times

Well, with 50 vehicles to cover, a full lap would just take too long. But, more than that, we prefer to evaluate these machines on the shorter – and more technical – 2.0-km loop at the back of the circuit. Plus, this avoids the front straight and the 1.2-km back-straight. If we included those, the more powerful cars and bikes would simply have too much of an advantage. More than outright power, we want to test chassis balance and composure at the limit. A track map points out the section of track that we utilise – the red line depicts the loop for the four-wheel vehicles, while the blue depicts the two-wheel loop, the main difference being that the bikes and scooters use the inside / bike loop of the parabolica at turns 10, 11 and 12.

Lap times are monitored by the timing system at the BIC. Each vehicle is fitted with a transponder to ensure that all lap times are accurate to the hundredth of a second. The fastest car or motorcycle to lap the circuit gets a full set of points. Thereafter, points are awarded on a relative scale, based on the gap to the leading machines.