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The 17-year-old from Pune has been scorching tracks across India with his aggressive performances

He looks upto Max Verstappen for inspiration and likes to be aggressive on the track just like his idol but Saishiva Shankaran from Pune is taking small yet significant steps to move up the motorsports ladder.

The 17-year-old had four podium finishes in the Indian F4 Championship and six podiums in the MRF National Championship 1600 in 2025.

He was also the youngest podium finisher in the 1300cc MRF Championship earlier in his career.

"So, starting out, it was my first generation from switching from karting to single-seater, so it was definitely a tough one (1:45) and with all the, you know, learning how to shift gears on time and, you know, the whole racecraft changing as a whole perspective, if you see, going from karts to single-seaters, so it took me a lot more of sessions and I think by the time of my second round, I could hit the pace where I could get a podium and that was definitely a motivating feeling for me to achieve more things in faster categories," he added.

Elaborating on what he has imbibed from the great Verstappen, Saishiva feels he has a long, long way to go but has picked up a few traits.

"I would say definitely the aggressiveness on track. I would say I'm in races while making moves, I'm pretty aggressive in my moves but I can't say I have taken most of the qualities from him because he's way far ahead of what I am today but I'm still getting there and learning. He has got four world titles and chasing for the fifth one. There's still so much you need to learn and there's so much he's learned on the journey of becoming a world champion as well. So there's a lot of aspects to it which I have to keep my head down and keep learning race by race."

Saishiva dreams of becoming a Formula One driver someday but had alternate plans as well.

"My dream is to be a Formula One driver one day and with these years coming to a realization to me that it was always a childhood dream for me but now if you see the budgets for Formula 3 or Formula 2 or even moving to Europe and racing internationally, it's super high and for someone who is as middle class as me, it becomes really hard to do it without sponsors I would say. But the Indian racing motorsports as a whole in India is improving year by year and if I do not get or if I do not have enough funds to get into the path of Formula One, I'm open towards GT3 or GT4 racing," he added.

Talking about his performances in the F4 circuit so far, Saishiva felt there was a lot of scope for improvement.

"I think now four rounds have been passed, the first round was not so great, which put us a bit on the back foot for the rest of the round and achieving my first podium in the Indian F4 in the second round, it felt good but I think there's a lot more to learn from the other competitors and my goal for getting a win in the Indian F4 championship never changes still," he added.