Motorsport Fans Plan Memorial Drive at RR Pearl Tower to Honour Rajiv One Year On

By Gad Masereka

Uganda’s motorsport community is rallying around a memorial drive planned for May 3, 2026 that will begin at RR Pearl Tower One, the Kampala skyscraper renamed in honour of the late Rajiv Ruparelia, and journey to Speke Resort Munyonyo in a tribute that brings together the two worlds that defined much of his adult life.

The event marks exactly one year since Rajiv Ruparelia died in a road accident on May 3, 2025, a loss that struck the motorsport world with particular force because Rajiv was not a distant patron of the sport but an active participant in it, a competitor who brought the same intensity to the racetrack that he brought to everything else he touched. His absence from Uganda’s motorsport calendar over the past year has been a quiet but persistent reminder of what the community lost.

The Ruparelia Group’s decision to make RR Pearl Tower One available as the assembly point was welcomed by organisers as a deeply appropriate choice. The tower, which Sudhir Ruparelia renamed in his son’s memory shortly after his death, stands as one of Kampala’s most visible architectural tributes to Rajiv’s legacy. Beginning the drive there gives the event a physical connection to that legacy before it moves through the city’s streets toward Munyonyo.

Organisers have described the drive as deliberately inclusive, designed to welcome not just motorsport enthusiasts but anyone who knew Rajiv, admired the Ruparelia family’s contribution to Uganda, or simply wanted to mark an anniversary that has resonated widely. Participants are expected on foot, by bicycle and on every variety of motorised vehicle, creating a convoy that reflects the breadth of the community Rajiv built around himself.

The event is also being positioned as the beginning of an annual tradition. Organisers and family members have spoken of their desire to make May 3 a permanent fixture in Kampala’s calendar, a day set aside each year for the kind of purposeful, joyful gathering that Rajiv excelled at convening. If the first year’s response is any indication, that tradition has already found its audience.

For Uganda’s motorsport community, the drive from Pearl Tower to Munyonyo is more than a tribute route. It is a statement that the man who raced alongside them, competed with them, and inspired them has not simply become a name on a building. He remains present in the speed, the noise, and the collective energy of every engine that moves in his memory.