Pikes Peak: An uphill battle

This mountain course in the Colorado Rockies has been testing drivers for almost a century. But this year’s competition was perhaps the last before it is changed forever
By Keith Mainland

The Pikes Peak Hillclimb has delivered ‘extreme’ motor sport for 93 years – long pre-dating anything ‘zany’ sponsored by the likes of Red Bull. The 12.5-mile mountain course, which forms part of the public toll road, heads to the highest point of the Colorado Rockies. Spectacular terrain, spectacular action – and spectacularly dangerous. Unsurprisingly, outside forces are threatening its future.

But for now the anachronism lives on. This year Pikes Peak, run in July, promised a serious fight between the factories: Ford versus Suzuki. All eyes were on who could break the 10-minute barrier before so much of the course is paved that the current record will be meaningless.

In the blue corner, Ford was fielding two-time World Rally Champion Marcus Grönholm and Andreas Eriksson in new-shape Fiestas, as built by Eriksson’s rallycross preparation company. Drafted in to help Grönholm was Timo Alanne, regular co-driver for Anton Alén in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge. Despite his rallycross background Eriksson took a
co-driver too – Per Ola Svensson. Also aiming at the 10-minute barrier was UK Rallycross champion Mark Rennison in a specially built RS200. Rennison had been invited to drive the car in place of 1984 World Champion Stig Blomqvist who had been double-booked.

In the red corner was Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima in his formidable Suzuki XL7. With six wins and the 10min 01.41sec record under his belt, Tajima is a Pikes Peak veteran. He knew in his head and on paper that the Fiestas should not be able to beat him, but ‘the mountain’ always plays a part and he knew not to take anything for granted.

There was also a name missing from all the pre-event hype: Paul Dallenbach. The Dallenbach family are a Pikes Peak dynasty, like the Unsers, and Paul had installed a more powerful Chevrolet V8 engine in his ‘open wheeler’. The class record for open wheelers stood at 10min 05.85sec, set in 1994 by Robby Unser.

So, the challenge: 156 corners, starting at 9390ft and finishing at 14,110ft – in under 10 minutes. The surface is 50/50 asphalt/gravel, making tyres a major factor as well as finding the optimum fuel/air mixture. The weather leading up to the race had been mixed and, although some rain is desirable to firm up the surface, competitors were expecting the gravel to be slippery.

At the pre-event briefings, race director Phil Layton promised competitors a ‘special year’ because of the Ford/Suzuki presence. Organisers insist on comprehensive briefings for competitors covering everything from the symptoms of altitude sickness to mountain wildlife, which includes bears. It was somewhat surreal to see Grönholm sat in the Rookies’ Briefing…

After the serious safety business, Layton allowed himself a moment of brevity when he told competitors that there are two large springs waiting for them if they fall off the mountain: Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, both more than 3000ft below!

Competitors practice the course in three sections over three mornings. Practice starts at 5.30am and finishes by 8.30am when the toll road opens to the public. Typically this allows three or four runs on each section. The only time competitors get to drive the whole course is on their single race-day run. Qualifying positions are awarded according to the results on the lower section of the course.

Early practice means that competitors can drive up and down the toll road during the day making pace notes. The 20mph speed limit is heavily enforced and regular competitors are full of stories about brushes with the local police. This year it was Eriksson who was stopped for speeding, and he was named and shamed at the briefings. He did, however, escape the draconian measures that have been metered out in the past. Legend has it that Michèle Mouton was banned from official practice and any further driving on the mountain before the race after being observed locking her brakes before starting a practice run.

When practice got under way this year, Rennison was the first to hit problems, his RS200 dropping a valve on its first run. Grönholm and Eriksson seemed to be struggling, looking fast on some parts of the twisty, paved section and off the pace on others. Grönholm said the car was not picking up properly out of slow corners. Was it due to the switch-like power delivery he had reported during testing? “No,” he said, “there is no power at all.” Tajima put in a sighting run and then got down to business, setting a time 8.5sec faster than Grönholm. Dallenbach was also going well and within half a second of Tajima.

At the other end of the technology spectrum, the historic competitors were struggling for grip on the top gravel section. Local man Bob Hill fared best in his 1968 Mustang, just under two seconds ahead of Michael Jones’s ’66 version and Chris Sayler in his ’55 Corvette.

Day two featured the Unlimited cars on the top gravel section. Tajima remained fastest, followed by Grönholm, but disaster struck for Eriksson when he rolled heavily after his car suddenly shrugged off a persistent misfire and flew off the road. Fortunately the damage to the car was fixable and the crew unhurt. Reports from competitors confirmed that the gravel sections were slippery, but hopes remained high for a sub-10-minute run. Grönholm described the course in typically laconic style as being “just like home, only always uphill”.

The historic cars were qualifying on the lower section, with 2008 winner Doug Mockett trading times in his 1954 Oldsmobile with Jones’s Mustang. Mockett and co-driver Angelica Fuentes finally took pole position by just under 8sec. Local man Keith Davidson was third in his Ford Falcon Sprint.

The Unlimited and Open Wheel classes set their qualifying times on the last day of practice and, with Rennison and Eriksson absent until race day, the fight would be between Dallenbach, Grönholm and Tajima. Grönholm had opted for shorter gearing in an attempt to get out of the corners faster, but things got little better during the session and he was left stranded on the hill with low fuel pressure.

In the end, Tajima took pole by around six seconds from Dallenbach, with Grönholm a further three seconds adrift. Dallenbach’s serious attempt to break the 10-minute barrier was over, however, as engine problems meant he had to fit a less powerful engine for race day. In the historic class, the tussle was between Mockett and Davidson, with Davidson coming out five seconds ahead.

Race day morning dawned fine and sunny and the organisers sent the historic class up first “to scare away the critters” before running the Unlimited cars. Tajima had requested they run early due to fears of rain around midday. It turned out the ‘critters’ that needed scaring away were spectators and Mockett/Fuentes reported people wandering around on the course before Douglas Allen crashed while avoiding a spectator. This resulted in a convoy of police cars going up the hill announcing that “anyone on the course will be arrested”. Once the dust settled, Davidson won the class with a new record of 13min 56.07sec, 20 seconds ahead of Mockett/Fuentes. Jess Neal was third in his ’71 Plymouth Barracuda.

Mark Rennison’s was the first Unlimited car to go. The gambled settings on the immaculate Mach2 Racing RS200 turned out not to be ideal, which was reflected in a time of 12min 11.56sec. Next up was Eriksson, who was going well until the notorious off-camber Engineers Bend caught him out and rearranged the rear wing sufficiently that he did not continue.

Grönholm followed with a time of 11min 28.96sec. Not much reward for his extreme effort in a difficult car and he arrived at the finish with his punctured right-rear tyre on fire. “The car was perfect at sea level,” he said, “but not at this altitude.” That left it all to ‘Monster’ Tajima.

Despite a winning run, there was just not enough grip to beat his own record. He stopped the clock at 10min 15.37sec to remain ‘King of the Mountain’. The Open Wheel class ran later in the morning after some heavy showers and Dallenbach set a creditable time of 10min 52.10sec to win.

But with the 10-minute mark intact, Pikes Peak had once again been the real winner.

So, what about next year? It is likely that the race will be moved back about a month to allow the top section of the course to be paved. This will make it 70/30 asphalt/gravel which will automatically bring times below 10 minutes – the only way to tame this place.

It is almost certain that Tajima will return, less so Ford. Grönholm would like to put what they learnt this year to good use and the US launch of the new Fiesta is in 2010, so maybe this year was just a high-profile recce.

After that, who knows?

*****

Pikes Peak Hillclimb is the second oldest motor race in the United States. It first ran in 1916 and the only surviving event to pre-date it is the Indianapolis 500. The origins of the race represent the type of spirit that created so many great motor sport events: ‘now that we’ve built the road, let’s race on it!’. But the story could be about to come to an end.

Trouble began when one of the US’s powerful environmental lobbies won a fight to get the road paved on the grounds that the erosion from it is polluting the local water supply. The litigation ended in 1999 with the instruction that the road must be completely paved by 2012. This will of course change the nature of the course and the type of car that suits it.

Bob Gillis, chairman of the Pikes Peak Board of Directors, refutes that the work will end the event, stating that “it is here to stay and in 13 years we will celebrate our Centennial” (it hasn’t run every year since 1916). Race director Phil Layton sees a completely paved road opening up the race to all sorts of new categories of car, including CART, SCCA and even Formula 1. This would be a quantum leap in terms of the current entry, which is made up of eight car classes and nine for motorcycles, sidecars and quads.

Loyalty to the race is high among competitors and most are of the opinion that you drive according to the risks. Others remember when Mario Andretti turned up with his Hawk Indycar in the late ’60s before any of the course was paved, raised the ride height and ran it up the mountain. Doug Mockett, a regular historic F1 competitor in the US, reckons it would be easy to get a group of those cars together for the race. The casualties of the paved road will be the few people who find their vehicle is no longer suitable or cannot be easily adapted.

All this sounds like madness to many of the enthusiasts and observers who have been coming to the race over the years. When could you ever rely on racing drivers ‘driving according to the conditions’? And spectator control could become totally unworkable. There were some near-misses this year on the asphalt sections because, with the drop-offs, sometimes the only place you can watch is roadside. On the other hand, people tend to stay further back on the gravel sections to avoid flying stones from the cars.

There are of course options. Some cars could be untimed, as happens at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Or the course could be divided into sections to allow better crowd control, faster safety intervention and possibly more than one run for competitors on each section. The question is whether the same approach to the organisation and promotion of the event will allow it to survive the planned development of the mountain course.

There is a consensus that ‘more of the same won’t do’ and the organisers’ current approach is going to require a serious overhaul. The event remains charming in its informality – no competition licence required – and accessibility for fans, who can mingle in the woodland picnic area that serves as a paddock. But the length and inaccessibility of parts of the course do compromise safety. There are very few marshalling posts and a trip up the hill by a safety car is a one-off event as, once up there, it has to wait for everyone to finish unless there is a serious incident. This type of thing might not cause concern among bikers and rally competitors, but it is certainly not what racers are used to and, given recent safety-related events in the racing world, it could prejudice the future of the event.

Whatever, it looks like we’re enjoying the last days of the great Pikes Peak Hillclimb as we’ve known it. Change is around the corner.