How to enter your first TSD rally in India, step by step

What a TSD rally actually is

A TSD rally is a time, speed and distance rally. Nobody is racing to be fastest. A crew of two, a driver and a navigator, is handed a road book and told to hold a set average speed between checkpoints. Autocar India's report on the 2026 JK Tyre-WIAA Women's Car Rally to the Valley describes it plainly: the format "rewards accuracy and strategic pacing" rather than outright speed, and crews follow rally style road books with no GPS help. That event ran Mumbai to Khopoli, about 125 km, with more than 200 participants.

This is also how most Indian cross-country rally raid drivers learn to navigate before they ever enter a desert rally. Dakshin Dare's Ultimate category and Desert Storm's XPlore and NDure classes are both run in this same TSD format, according to Red Bull India's guide to the country's rally championships, before stepping up to the special stage navigation used in events like Dakar.

Step by step: what you need to enter

1. Sort your papers. For the JK Tyre-WIAA Women's Rally, held from Mumbai's NSCI on 12 April 2025, the Free Press Journal reported that each team needed a valid driving licence, vehicle registration, road tax and insurance papers, a Pollution Under Control certificate, an FMSCI rally licence for the driver, one day rally insurance, an indemnity declaration and passport photographs.

2. Get licensed for the day. If you do not hold an annual FMSCI competition licence, you do not need one just to try a rally. Evo India reported in 2021 that FMSCI reintroduced a one event licence, priced at ₹250 inclusive of GST, valid for a single event with no medical certificate needed. Check the current fee with your club before you enter, since this is a 2021 figure.

3. Use the car you already have. Your dashboard odometer is enough for a first TSD rally. Crews who take it seriously later fit a dedicated electronic trip meter that zeroes more precisely at every checkpoint, but that is an upgrade, not a requirement to start.

4. Register with the organising club, usually a motor club affiliated to FMSCI such as WIAA in Mumbai or a regional club running an event like Malwa Adventure, and pay the entry fee.

5. On the day, you get the road book, zero your trip meter at the start, and the navigator calls out distances and turns while the driver holds the average speed between time controls. Being early or late at a control costs penalty points, not disqualification.

What it costs

The JK Tyre-WIAA Women's Rally charged ₹15,000 per team, non-refundable, and set a minimum driver age of 18.

Independent club rallies price similarly. The 4th edition of the Malwa Adventure TSD Rally, run near Indore in July 2017, charged four wheeler crews ₹15,000 with a hotel stay included or ₹11,000 without, for driver and co-driver together.

Fuel and tolls are usually on you. There is no separate licence fee to budget for beyond the one event licence, unless you plan to do enough rallies in a year that an annual FMSCI licence makes sense.

Why this matters for India's rally raid story

Hero MotoSports and TVS Racing riders who go to Dakar and the W2RC navigate road books under real time pressure in the desert. TSD rallying is the low cost, low risk version of the same skill, run on tarmac and open roads close to home. It is the easiest on ramp this beat has, and the one most Indian readers can actually try this year.

Sources