There are hillclimbs and then there’s Pikes Peak.
Cars have been driven up steep roads against the clock for about as long as motorsport has existed but, unless someone builds a paved road to the summit of Everest, it’s unlikely that any hillclimb course will ever match the twisting, 12.42-mile, hairpin-riddled road to the top of this Colorado mountain.
With its raw nature and extreme dangers, Pikes Peak-the 104th running of which takes place this weekend – is reminiscent of the Isle of Man TT: if it wasn’t such an ingrained piece of motorsport history, it couldn’t possibly exist today. The pile of health and safety paperwork would probably rise higher than the mountain’s 14,115ft summit.
The reputation of Pikes Peak arguably exists because the hillclimb’s one-off nature and bespoke rulebook mean it’s incredibly malleable, allowing manufacturers and drivers to shape it in their image.
Think Pikes Peak and you might picture Ari Vatanen in a Peugeot 405 T16, one hand raised to shield the sun from his eyes, the other deftly applying opposite lock as he power slides around a bend.
Perhaps you picture Rod Millen in his succession of Toyotas, Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima in his monstrous Suzukis or Sébastien Loeb putting Peugeot back on top of the literal mountain a few decades after Vatanen with the 208 T16.
Or maybe your brain is still trying to compute the electric Volkswagen ID R seemingly defying the laws of physics as Romain Dumas charged to a still-standing hill record in surreal near-silence (well, apart from a compulsory siren more annoying than any ADAS bong) back in 2018.
Yes, the event has changed greatly over time – not least because the 156-hairpin road to the summit is now fully paved. Don’t think it’s any less challenging, though: the brutal conditions at elevation mean the road is constantly shifting and adjusting; no two runs are the same.
The efforts of Vatanen, Loeb and Dumas resonate in part because they were as much marketing stunts as motorsport endeavours. Indeed, Vatanen’s ascent was immortalised in the thrilling Climb Dance video, which you really should devour on YouTube after reading this.
But what I really love about Pikes Peak is that, while those big-budget manufacturer efforts pop up every few years to bring attention to the event, the hillclimb is really an amateur competition at heart.
The bulk of the brave drivers who flock to Colorado each year are privateers with home-brewed machines and big dreams. They’re not there for glory but to test themselves on an unrivalled stage.
The spectators might be even tougher. There’s only one road up Pikes Peak-and it’s needed for the competitors. So spectators have to drive up the hill long before dawn on race day, and they can’t descend until the event finishes many hours later.