This year, the 95th edition of Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is being run. The first race was run as early as 1916. The car race is rightly called ”Race to the Clouds”. The rules are simple. First up the almost 2 km winding mountain road wins! Fastest last year was a largely standard equipped Tesla Model S!
For the 95th year, Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is run in Colorado, USA. The race is considered one of the toughest car races in the world and the track runs along winding mountain roads with no-profound descents along the 1400-meter-high sides at only 19.9 km. The first winner of the competition was the then 22-year-old American Rea Lentz who, with his Romano Special, managed the mountain in an impressive 20 minutes 55 seconds. At that time, the entire track consisted of gravel roads, it was not until 2011 that the entire track was paved.
Thanks to the thin air, the race has become especially interesting for electric cars. The oxygen molecules required for the internal combustion engines are fewer and smoother, which means that they do not have the same compression in the engines. However, electric cars are not affected by the altitude, electric cars perform just as well in vaccum as in air.
Pikes Peak is relatively short, only 2 miles, which allows electric cars to maximize power without running out of batteries. Nobuhiro ”Monster” Tajima’s had nearly 1,500 horsepower in its Reimac 2016. That same year an electric car also won the entire competition when Blake Fuller in a Tesla Model S climbed up the mountain in under 12 minutes.
In 2013, Frenchman Sebastien Loeb set the record in the race with his Peugeot 208. He managed to maneuver the 156 curves and 1400 altitude meters in 8 min 13 sec 878 thousandths.
