Pikes Peak - Over a Hundred Years of Racing to the Clouds

July 17th, 1913. With the summer temps in Colorado approaching record highs, 27-year-old William Wayne Brown decides to drive his modified and stripped-down 1910 Buick Model 10 (with the name "Bear Cat" painted on the engine cover) up the winding dirt road to the summit of Pikes Peak. 

It was the early days of automobiles. And an independent and unsanctioned 20-mile hillclimb would’ve been a preposterous, even suicidal, idea. But that didn’t stop the ambitious Kansas City native and his co-pilot J. R. Bradley, a local “automobile man”, from attempting the feat in the 20hp open cockpit racer. 

After the halfway point, the lush Colorado Springs greenery starts to fade away, leaving only dry brown dirt and sheer cliff drop-offs a mere foot or two from the tire’s edge. Altitude sickness starts to set in. Reduced coordination and increased muscle fatigue start to impact Brown’s ability to navigate the car through the various hairpin turns and treacherous switchbacks.

By the 10,000 foot mark, even Brown’s trusty Buick begins to struggle. The high altitude air is far too thin for the car’s rudimentary carburetor. The engine starts to lose power due to the change in air-to-fuel mixture. Brown pushes the car to its limits.

Once past 12,000 feet, the landscape becomes even more ominous. A single dirt track. Crisp, dead air. Wisps of clouds floating eerily alongside the open-wheeled racer. The atmosphere becomes hostile, desolate, unnerving. Mars-like. The risk of High Altitude Cerebral Edema starts to become real. Brown’s cognitive function starts to slip. And there’s still 2,000 feet to go.

Three and a half hours after his departure, shortly before dinner time, Brown arrives at the summit of Pikes Peak, an altitude of some 14,417 feet above sea level. He’s exhausted and dazed. But adrenaline keeps him conscious.

And, like anyone attempting something crazy with a vehicle, he stops to snap a quick pic. He drives his 1400 lb Brass-era Buick into place on the steps of the telegraph station at the peak. He’s determined to get the car as high as humanly possible. 

With a few stunned bystanders, and even a weary law-man in attendance, history is made. Brown becomes the very first person to summit the infamous Pikes Peak in a gas-powered automobile.

“Driving up the Peak may sound all right but when you try it, you find that it is anything but pleasant,” Brown told the Colorado Springs Newspaper the following day, after spending the night in a mountain cabin. “It was impossible to hold the car on the road all the time. We had to make frequent stops to roll large boulders out of the road and to make bridges over gullies.”

Just three short years after Brown’s daring drive, the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was born. Naturally.

WHERE THE HEAVENS TOUCH THE EARTH

As one of Colorado's 54 fourteeners (mountains more than 14,000 feet above sea level), glacier-carved Pikes Peak has been captivating those in the Eastern Rocky Mountain region for years. The band of Ute people who called the area home were the Tabeguache, whose name means the "People of Sun Mountain". The Pawnee, an indigenous people of the Great Plains, called the very same mountain Tûs Pêh meaning "Where the Heavens Touch the Earth".

But it wasn’t until 1916, in the midst of WWI, that the first official hillclimb on Pikes Peak was initiated by philanthropist and entrepreneur Spencer Penrose, who had recently converted the narrow carriage road that Brown had dangerously traversed, into the wider Pikes Peak Highway. And naturally, Penrose wanted to promote it. 

With over 156 turns along the 12.49 mile dirt and gravel course, the event was an immediate highlight on the hillclimb racing calendar in the United States. During this inaugural year, the aptly named Penrose trophy was awarded to Rea Lentz who achieved a time of 20:55.60 in his Romano Demon Special (trimming a whopping three hours and two minutes off Brown’s 1913 Buick run) In the same year, Floyd Clymer won the motorcycle class with a time of 21:58.41 on his custom 1914 Excelsior Twin.

Rea Lentz tuning his Romano Demon Special before his 1st place run

Floyd Clymer after his 1st Place motorcycle climb in 1916

THE EARLY YEARS

With WWI continuing to wreak global havoc, it was decided that the exhilarating new hillclimb event should be put on hold. It returned to the racing calendar in the 1920's. But the newly minted American Motorcyclists Association (AMA) refused to sanction the race for motorcycles. So it became, temporarily, a car-only racing competition.

These early decades were dominated by the #92 car driven Louis Unser, patriarch of the legendary Unser family of racing drivers. He achieved the fastest time and won the event nine times between 1934 and 1953 creating a rivalry between himself and Glen Scultz, who won the race four times during the same period.

By the 1950’s the event was a fixture on the American racing calendar. And in 1953, the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) officially sponsored the event. Naturally, this brought an influx of sports cars to the mountain race. This marks the moment the Pikes Peak hill climb became a true testing ground for both car and driver.

During the nine-year period from 1953 to 1962, the course record was broken every single year—the longest string of record breaking years in the event’s history. Most record-breaking runs were by Louis Unser’s nephew, Bobby Unser also sporting the number #92. This period also marked the return of motorcycles to the event, with big block four-stroke twins dominating the class.

Bobby Unser on one of record breaking runs up to the summit of Pikes Peak

QUEEN OF THE MOUNTAIN

In 1984 the first European racers took part in the race with Norwegian rallycrosser Martin Schanche competing in his Ford Escort Mk3 4x4 and legendary French rally driver Michèle Mouton piloting the infamous Audi Sport Quattro. It was a new era for European teams in what was a virtually unknown American hillclimb.

While Schanche failed to set a new track record due to a flat tire, Mouton (together with her World Rally Championship Italian co-driver Fabrizia Pons) won the Open Rally category but failed to win the event overall. That would change the following year. In fact, everything would change the following year.

The standing record on Pikes Peak in 1985 was 11:38.30, logged in 1983 by Al Unser, Jr. piloting an open-wheel V8 Woziwodzki Wells Coyote Chevy racer. Combined, the Unser family had won the race to the clouds 20 times leading up to the 1985 competition. It was their mountain. So, when Mouton returned to Pikes’s Peak in the summer of 1985, she had unfinished business. She was determined not only to win but to take Al Unser Jr’s record at the same time.

In 1985, Mouton decided to pilot the Audi Sport Quattro S1 solo, without her co-driver Fabrizia Pons whom she competed with the year before. This would make the car lighter, faster. However it would put Mouton at greater risk of miscalculating one of the 156 treacherous turns. 

During the practice run on Friday, Mouton was absolutely flying. “The organisers made my life very complicated,” she recalls. “It was like it was the first time they saw a rally car or a turbocharged car – even a European or a woman! They caught me speeding on the practice starts by 5 mph and put me before a small tribunal saying, ‘You are like a criminal, you’ve been speeding, you could have killed my children’” The organizers fined her $500.

On the next practice day, Mouton spun the wheels of her powerful Audi Sport Quattro at the starting line, unwittingly peppering the nearby race marshalls with dust and gravel. She was immediately fined another $500 and banned from driving on the mountain anywhere but the official course itself.

This meant she would have to forfeit the “flying start”, a starting procedure that allows Pikes Peak competitors to speed up to the starting line, crossing it with momentum, rather than starting from a standstill. “They knew my time from the practice and didn’t want me to win,” she remembers, “so they found something they believed would really be a big penalty.”

“Both incidents were really harmless. I don’t understand how you could make such drama of it,” Mouton would later recall to the press. “But not everyone was happy that we had come back to Pikes Peak. A European car that drives circles around the competition, and with a woman at the wheel. With these games they probably wanted to make our lives difficult, wanted to prevent us from being so successful again. Not with me though. If you put pressure on me, I will only become stronger. That was the biggest motivation for me.”

On the day of the race, nine Audi team members pushed the rolling Audi up to the starting line, Mouton sat inside, helmet on, revving the engine aggressively in order to keep the monstrously powerful turbocharged 5-cylinder engine at optimal temperature. 

Even with this penalty at the start, by the time the quattro streaked past the flag waiver at the summit, the official clock logged a time of 11:25.39, shattering Al Unser Jr.’s standing 1983 record by 13 seconds. Mouton won the year outright. She was queen of the mountain. “You are always sliding to one side, and then to the other,” Mouton recalls. “It’s like a ballet. Like a dance. It’s fantastic”.

Michele Mouton on her record breaking drive on Pikes Peak

While the Europeans were dominating the mountain with their revolutionary all-wheel drive technology, the organizers of the event were still grappling with whether or not to allow motorcycles in the event. By 1976, bikes were back on the mountain. But the tragic death in 1982 of motorcycle racer Bill Gross who was hit by another motorcycle on the course after he fell from his bike, left the officials with no other choice but to once again ban two-wheelers from competing.

The eighties continued to see the peak dominated by European cars and drivers. In 1987 German racer Walter Röhrl set a new record on the course of 10:47:85 in his 600 hp Audi Sport Quattro S1 E2, not only shattering Mouton’s record but also being the first person to break the 11:00 minute barrier—a feat most people at the time thought was impossible.

The next major milestone on the mountain was achieved by New Zealander Rod Millen who, in 1994, set a new record for the fastest ascent. He broke the old record time by 40 seconds with a time of 10:04:06 in his all wheel drive Toyota Celica GT. A record that would hold for an astounding 13 years.

END OF THE DIRT ERA

Over the years, the peak grew to be one of Colorado’s biggest tourist attractions. By the late 90s it was drawing half a million visitors a year. This meant tens of thousands of cars were driving the dirt track up to the peak and back down again—which created runoff, lots and lots of runoff.

In 1999 the Sierra Club brought a lawsuit against the city of Colorado Springs, the custodian of the road, saying that having it made of dirt was causing serious environmental damage to streams, reservoirs, vegetation and wetlands that were downstream. Eventually the city settled and paving preparations began. 

Rod Millen, who was still the current record holder on the mountain at the time, warned that paving the road would put an end to the race. “It'd be like running the Long Beach Grand Prix with no barriers between the track and the spectators,” he told a Colorado weekly paper at the time, adding “and as far as the average tourist goes, the gravel slows them down. It sends the correct message. From a general safety standpoint, it's better to leave it as it is."

Despite Millen’s warning, the paving commenced in 2002. The city of Colorado Springs paved 10% of the road each year as per the court’s order. According to Mitch Snow, former Director of Promotions and Legacy for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, the craziest part about the paving project was that it was done haphazardly. 

Rather than paving from the bottom to the top, sections were paved here and there. "That nearly killed the race," Snow said, because it was impossible for racers to properly anticipate how to set up their cars. He says in 2006, the event nearly went under because so few drivers wanted to risk racing.

During this chaotic and evolutionary period however, history was still being made on the mountain every year. In 2005, the late Ken Block would debut his rallying career on the mountain as part of the Rally America Championship, driving a 2005 Subaru WRX STi sporting his now iconic snow-camo livery.

“I grew up dreaming of racing on that epic road,” Block wrote on Instagram “and I ended up doing it not as part of the usual hill climb race, but as part of a rally race. It was still 50% dirt at that time, so I got to slide some of those legendary turns, like I saw some of my heroes do in the 80’s.” He raced in the Group N class with co-driver Alex Gelsomino, finishing in 13:19.17 and placing 5th in class. This marked the beginning of his rallying journey and he was awarded Rally America Rookie of the Year for the season.

But it was Japanese driver Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima who dominated the official hillclimb events, scoring six overall victories during this period (2006–2011) and clinching two course records. Most notably, his 2011 run was the first to break the 10:00 minute barrier logging a time of 9:51.278 at the finish line in his Suzuki SX4 Hill Climb Special. It was his seventh overall win on the mountain.

Tajima on his way to breaking the 10:00 minute barrier of Pikes Peak in 2011

The year after Tojima’s record-breaking drive the epic paving project was finally complete and Millen’s prediction from over a decade previous proved incorrect. The 2012 race saw over 170 racer registrations by December 2011, compared with 46 at the same time the previous year. That year, the 90th running of the event, saw a larger field and a longer race day than ever before.

With the entire course consisting of smooth asphalt and a larger roster of all-electric vehicles entering the competition, things started to really heat up. In 2013, the 9:00 barrier was shattered by WRC legend Sébastien Loeb. Clocking an eye-watering time of 8:13.87 in his Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak special. But as things sped up, they also got more dangerous. 

Snow says paving the road forever changed how racers have to approach the challenge. "The dirt was consistent, it would build up in corners and slow the cars down." According to Snow, the pavement is narrower by as much as 20 feet in some corners so it became more common to see cars go off the road in places where they never used to. The organizers had to tighten up the safety standards accordingly with what has been described as the “strictest roll cage regs in motorsport.”

However, roll cages couldn’t help the motorcycles that were back on the mountain and sanctioned to race as part of the hillclimb. In 2014, motorcycle racer Bobby Goodin succumbed to injuries after he wrecked his 2014 Triumph Daytona 675R moments after crossing the finish line on the summit. The following year, motorcycle racer Carl Sorensen, a 39-year-old father of one from Centennial, went off a cliff during a final practice run along a 3-mile stretch before the summit.

ELECTRICS DOMINATE

High altitudes are not kind to fossil fuel engines. Electric cars, however, don’t have the same weaknesses—they don’t have to deal with the problem of the thinner air that can stymie race cars powered by a traditional fuel system. This made the mountain the ideal testing ground for manufacturers to put their new all-electric performance cars to the test. Not to mention, a win at Pikes Peak was a boon for publicity.

At the 2018 event, an electric car set a new overall record for the first time in the event's history as Frenchman Romain Dumas completed the course in the all-electric Volkswagen I.D. R with a time of 7:57.148, breaking the 8:00 minute barrier for the first time and to this day holds the fastest overall time to the peak with a whiplash-inducing average speed of over 90 miles an hour. 

2019 was another tragic year for motorcycles on the mountain. Famous Santa Barbara-based racer Carlin Dunne crashed his 2019 Ducati Streetfighter V4 Prototype 20 yards before the finish line on race day. He had won numerous titles on the mountain since he started competing back in 2008 and was, some say, the finest motorcycle racer to ever perform on Pikes Peak.

In 2012, Dunne was the first racer to break the motorcycle 10:00 minute mark onboard his Ducati Multistrada. The following year he beat every motorcycle in the competition on an all-electric Lightning motorcycle. After Dunne’s tragic death at the Peak in 2019, motorcycles were banned indefinitely.

Carlin Dunne beats all gas bikes at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

“To me adrenaline is both friend and foe,” Dunne said in 2019. “It can heighten your senses but it can also cause you to lose your cool. Racing up Pikes Peak requires a sound mind and the nerve to push the envelope at the grandest race course on earth.”

It’s been 112 years since William Wayne Brown piloted his stripped-down Buick up the winding dirt road to the summit of Pikes Peak. At the time, he was probably only thinking about one thing: not dying. He almost certainly would not have been thinking about the multitude of triumphs that would transpire on that very same mountain, or the various stereotypes that would be shattered on its many turns, or the evolutionary milestones of automotive design that such a formidable drive would provoke, or that his crazy conquest would spark what is now the second-oldest continuous contest of speed in the United States of America.

This year marks the 113th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Romain Dumas will be back again to compete on the mountain for his ninth year, this time in a 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning Supertruck hoping to break his standing record of fastest summit. 

Even the Unser family is still be proudly represented on the mountain, now by fourth generation racer Loni Unser who will compete in her 2023 Porsche 911 Turbo Cup sporting the same number #92 as many Unsers did before her.

Loni Unser in her 2023 Porsche 911 Turbo Cup