While the passionate about racing, Dato’ Shanmuganathan Arumugam is also creating memories as he is competing alongside his son, Ashen, in the Toyota GAZOO Racing Malaysia VIOS Challenge 2025.
Both are racing in the Sporting Class of amateurs with a two-car team under Kashash Vina Motorsports Racing. Shanmuganathan, one of the longest competing racers in the Vios Challenge, has been part of the series since Season 1 in 2017.
“Driving is my passion and Toyota has given a platform for people like me to pursue and experience what professional racing is all about. It’s a platform for me to understand what is racing. I started very late, I was about 49, but I’ve had fun. I’m 56 this year,” said Shanmuganathan.
“Racing is all about competition and I thrive on this. Unfortunately, due to work commitment and with Ashen focused on his studies, it is very unfortunate that we cannot devote 100% of our attention and time to it.
“For instance, every race weekend is like starting fresh trying to understand the car and the track. We do not engage any professionals in preparing the car and in fact this is entirely done by my company’s personnel. In a way we are shorthanded – if we had professionals assisting in terms of the car’s setting and technical information we can improve but because we are not spending enough time for the race we’ve not explored this …We may explore this in the future.
“Just to put things into better perspective, my race crew is actually our factory mechanics who are employed to care for the company’s trucks – they are not in motorsports at all. Everything is prepared in-house, it’s like a family thing. At the end of the day we enjoy the race and it creates a lot of memories.”
For 19-year-old Ashen, competing alongside “Dad” has indeed been an opportunity of a lifetime.
“I’m grateful to my father for his support and encouragement for me to get into racing. This is an extremely valuable opportunity for me,” said Ashen who is currently awaiting intake to pursue a career to become a commercial pilot.
“Seeing my dad go racing has always been something I’ve wanted to do. Now that both of us are racing in the same class, there is some form of competition on track between us but as far as who is the faster driver – that’s a very delicate and subjective matter.”
“If there’s room for me to improve and if the opportunity arises in future, I would certainly like to go further into the higher classes of racing.”
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