Castrol India launches International Driving Championship in India

Release date: 24 May 2005

Castrol India Limited, market leader in the retail automotive lubricant segment, today announced the India leg of the BP global International Driving Championship (IDC) for employees / third party contractors of the BP Group.

The Finals for the India event will be held on 28th May 2005 at Kharghar in Navi Mumbai. Winners of the India leg will have an opportunity to participate in the Regional / Global Finals to be held in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2005.

The International Driving Championship was launched in 1992 but has been expanded into a global event since 2003. According to Naveen Kshatriya, Managing Director, Castrol India, “BP’s International Driving Championship is a unique opportunity for our staff and third party contractors to share the best practices and experiences on Safe Driving within the organization. We are very excited that India will now be a part of this event and we hope to do well in our first year of participation.”

The IDC is held bi-annually and is eagerly looked forward to by the staff and contractors. The Championship has been recognized as a leading professional and safety driven event globally. It is also an opportunity to recognize the professional drivers within the organization and it motivates them to achieve higher standards of safe driving.

The primary objective of the Championship is to build road safety awareness and understand the safe driving techniques that could be adopted in their driving related activities.

The India leg of IDC has two categories -

Heavy Vehicles - Rigid
Light Vehicles - less than 3.5 tones

There are three stages that lead up to the Finals. The Championship commences with local countries selecting drivers to take part in the regional competition. The winners of this stage go into the second stage to compete in one of the four regional events, one held in each geographic region. From the Regional events, 30 winners are selected to participate in the global finals.

The preparation for the competition began last year with the rollout of defensive driving training for our contractors and professional staff drivers (those driving atleast XXX kms on company business). The application process for the competition commenced in January 2005. The drivers went through an extremely rigorous process of selection, which included on road assessment of safe driving skills, knowledge about driving and safety, fatigue management and zero accident record for atleast 12 months. For the Light Vehicles, In each region of India from North, East, West and South, two nominees were identified from the sales executives and two were nominated by the industrial division of business. The ten participants who will take part in the heavy vehicle segment are truck drivers selected from Castrol contracted fleets across the country. According to Collin MacIntyre (Head Health safety security and Environment , BP India) – This is indeed a great opportunity for our staff and contractors’ drivers to compete with their contemporaries across the world. It will be a great learning experience not just for those who make it to the finals but to all our drivers who have gone through the most stringent safe driving programme.