From whispering into horses ears to vrooming on tracks

Attempts were made to understand Ishaan Madesh’s fascination for show-jumping horses. The result, for both parties, was more hypotheses than introspected observations. Irrespective, there’s an endearment in his tone when he speaks of it. It’s unmistakably genteel and quite cute really.  

Talk karting, though, Ishan loses some of that cherubic projection.

It’s suddenly about downforce, angles, cornering strategies, tyre grip, weight management…

And he isn’t putting this on either. This is just Ishan being Ishan. For clarity, you need not even watch him race. Listen to him talk racing, and they come without the ‘ums’ and the ‘ahs’ and you get a fair reflection of what the teen does on the track.

Speaking of, Ishan is a seven-time national karting champion. 

“I had no interest in karting,” Ishan tells DH. “I enjoyed show jumping a lot so I wanted to focus on that, but when I was around seven-years-old, a coach told my dad (Madesh Lakshman) to put me on the track and see how I fare. Also, by then, my brother (Rohaan, also a karting champion) was already being spoken of very highly. 

“I really didn’t want to race but I entered the championship the next year, and I finished dead last in the Micro Max category. I was last in every single race, imagine that?! Meanwhile, my brother was winning everything. I don’t take to losing easily so I worked during the off-season and the next year, I ended up winning my first championship.”

Title aside, Ishaan became the youngest person in the country to win the category ever, and he did it when no one took him or his sputtering car seriously. 

“That championship gave me the confidence to build on,” he says. “The car wasn’t the fastest so I have to devise ways to stay in contention. Unlike my brother, who wings it, but comes up with exceptional results because of his talent, I have to strategise a lot. In that championship, all the planning I had done came together, I had to take a lot of risks, and I don’t normally do, and that’s when everyone knew I had something in me.”

It’s all rather interesting because the 10th grade student at Canadian International School went from not wanting to kart, to kind-of-sort-of wanting to kart to winning a championship and is now taking on Formula 4. All of this in nine years! 

“I have started training Formula 1600 cars now, but I am not sure which championship to take up this year, 1600 or 2000. But the plan is to stick to my basics and eventually get to F3 the next season, and F2 and so on.”

So, single-seater racing it is for Ishaan. 

Ishaan Madesh

What of Rohaan? 

“I think you should ask him but I think he’s more about karting. That’s his thrill for him, he’s always been a purist like that, likes to race close to the ground, and it’s not about speed, it’s about overtaking and the frequency of it,” he says. “I don’t think he will take up F1 if he gets the chance (laughs).”

What about you? 

“That’s the goal, we have to make the right moves and plan to make that happen,” he says after just enough contemplation.

Ishaan Madesh

While he shuffles between rear-wing settings in Formula cars and the vision of earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering in years to come, it surely has occurred to Ishaan - maybe even Rohaan - that they come on the heels of brothers from Bengaluru with an eye for excellence at racing.

It was the Maini brothers then. It’s the Madesh brothers now.