The 100th Anniversary of the Broadmoor Pikes Peak Hill Climb is already underway with a week of practice and qualifying sessions. The entry list is packed this year for the monumental anniversary—just a month after the Indianapolis 500’s 100th running, mind you—and along with the every-year favorites like Mike Ryan’s Banks-tuned Freightliner and Paul Dallenbach’s be-winged PVA Dallenbach Special, a lot of intrigue will follow the racers up the mountain. Here are six things to look for in the car classes, at least, this weekend if you’re on the mountain or following the race’s live timing or radio broadcast. For a lark, we’ll also throw in enough onboard video to keep you from working for a while.
1. Rod Millen and his Celica – The crazy Kiwi returns this year with his bright-yellow Pennzoil-sponsored Toyota Celica. The beastly Celica All-Trac racked up three overall wins at Pikes Peak (1994, 1997, and 1998) and with Millen at the wheel set the course record of 10:04.050 in ‘94. That record stood for 17 years and now with the mountain course completely paved, one has to wonder what kind of lap time the Celica can throw down. I’d expect a winning time a bit under 9:00 this year and we will see if Millen, who flogged the Celica last year up the Goodwood Festival of Speed Hill Climb (above), can make it happen.
2. Monster Tajima and. Rhys Millen in the Electric Modified Class
Make no bones about it, this is very much a potential fight for the overall win. Rhys won outright last year with a 9:07.222, his first victory and also the quickest-ever electric-car run up Pikes Peak. In the Electric Modified class,nine-time winner Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima came in second with a 9:32.401. I’d expect him to have a bit more pace this year and he may very well challenge the Millens for the overall win and I certainly would expect both to be in the hunt to break Rhys’ electric-car record from last year. Either way, it remains utterly eerie for these cars to rip up the mountain silently at more than 130 mph, but with engines that are immune to the thin air at the mountain’s top, they should have a major time advantage in the final few miles of the climb.
3. Romain Dumas looking for an incredible double
After handling a steady amount of the time behind the wheel of the 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning Porsche 919 Hybrid, Dumas boarded a plane Monday for Denver to run his highly modified Norma M20. The Frenchman won at Pikes Peak in 2014 with a 9:05.801 (above) and despite skipping the event last year, there’s no reason to expect Dumas won’t be any slower. He’s an experienced hill climber and one of the many multitalented sports car drivers in the world right now (along with European Rally Championship winner and Toyota factory pilot Stephane Sarrazin). It probably goes without saying that no other driver has ever won Le Mans and Pikes Peak (who also won Le Mans in 2010 with Audi) and certainly no one has won them both seven days apart.
4. Tony Quinn’s insane “Focus” tubeframe hill climber from Down Under
We’ve shown you a video on Quinn—a Scot who lives in New Zealand—and this incredible tubeframe “Focus” that will tear up the hill with power from an 850 horsepower twin-turbo Nissan V6. I don’t think Quinn is likely to win the race, but I expect he’ll find a few newfound fans stateside with the world’s craziest Focus.
5. A filled-to-the-brim TA1 class
The Time Attack 1 class features an incredible variety of machinery and drivers that will include everything and everyone from American pro touring and GT driver Robb Holland in an Audi TT-RS to Finnish driver Mikko Kataja in a 1979 Toyota Starlet (above). The performance variety here is fantastic and don’t be surprised if the sharp end of the field in this class is in the hunt for an overall podium.
6. Kevin Wesley’s Viper ACR running Pikes Peak for Hot Rod Magazine
OK, I’m a bit biased, having been at Gingerman Raceway when Wesley took delivery of this factory-loaner Viper in March. This car is an absolute weapon in the Time Attack 2 (Production) class and will square off with basically stock 2015-2017 model year cars, including a second ACR Viper with former drag racer Stephanie Reaves behind the wheel. Wesley put the Viper on pole with the 8th-quickest qualifying run so we will see how the former One Lap of America winner handles the mountain with its naturally aspirated V10 engine panting as it summits Pikes Peak.
The 100th Anniversary Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb competition begins Sunday @ 8 a.m. local time/10 a.m. ET. Here are some useful resources:
The Broadmoor Pikes Peak hillclimb?
Broadmoor is the name of the place in Britain that is home to all the psychotic murderers and oil-burning lunatics who are deemed a major threat to society. That throws up images of cars being driven into spectators, drivers jumping out of the car with chainsaws and turning anyone they see into hamburger. But that pales into insignificance at the sheer madness of tackling the longest, highest and most dangerous hillclimb on earth and makes the Goodwood Festival of Speed look like climbing over a matchbox!
Geordie, the Broadmoor section of Colorado Springs is, in a nutshell, the ultra-luxury area in the southwest area of the city that is famous for it’s on-the-mountains views, eye-wateringly expensive homes, and so on. It’s also home to Gold Camp Road, which is great for…well, teenagers who like the view of the city at night. So I’ve been told.
Thanks for that Bryan, mate – wasn’t Colorado Springs also the site of the great Nicola Tesla’s headquarters of electrical magic where he dreamed and made the future. Maybe he’d have loved the electric racers which could have used his free wirelessly transmitted electricity. Hell – we’d all be driving electric cars by now and travelling to the stars to watch drag racing on other planets if he’d been half as good at business as he was at inventing cool things!