Text By Nestor Cabrera Photos by Marcus Cervantes, Larry Chen and Pikes Peak Staff

Never heard of The Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb? Well, it’s just the second oldest race in the USA. The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, or PPIHC for short, was first held in 1916, since then the race has been run nearly every year since. In 2016 the race celebrated 100 years but due to World Wars I and II. it had only been run 94 times.

The PPIHC is one of the most difficult races to conquer, the 12.42 miles course has 156 turns and some of the most dangerous hairpins in motorsports. The race begins at over 9300 feet and ends at 14,115 feet, which earns its slogan, “the race to the clouds”.  The current race record is held by the all-electric purpose-built VW I.D.R. race car with a record of 7:57.148.

Here is what we took away from the 100th running of the PPIHC.

Weather, It’s the X factor. Unlike other race venues where weather can pretty much be forecast, at Pikes Peak it can change in an instant. We experienced this first hand with our first day at Devils Playground in near freezing conditions. On day two of practice, we returned to Devils Playground to experience summer-like temperatures. Unfortunately, on race day the weather would not play nice.

The course doesn’t get any easier. No matter how many times you run up Pikes Peak, or the amount of racing experience you have, you are always racing the mountain. A misjudgment in the braking zones can cause you to veer down the side of the mountain which happened to several drivers. Levi Sherley, an Ultra 4 racer and first-time competitor did just that. He drove off the hill, rolled, landed on all 4 tires, then proceeded to continue his trek up the mountain. What else would you expect from a King of the Hammers top-10 finisher. Unfortunately, this was not the case for Will Au-Yeung and his Vibrant Performance Civic who misjudged a braking zone and lost control rolling off the course. Thankfully Will escaped with only a few bruises.  

Race day madness. To avoid the insane traffic on race day we camped on the mountain with our friend Kash Singh who races a 2017 twin turbo Ford Mustang. As we stated earlier, the weather can change in an instant and it did. As we finished camp, it began to rain, and in a few minutes the top of Pikes Peak was covered in snow. As we went to bed, we had a feeling in our guts that the race would be shortened—as it was in 2021. Thanks to the hard work of the road crew who worked through the night to clear the snow and ice from the road, racers were able to complete a full run from start to finish line. Weather would still play a large role during the race as fog and wet roads would force some teams to switch to rain tires and a different race strategy.

The race started out a few minutes later than scheduled and as the racecars took the starting line one would wonder how they would be able to navigate through the racecourse with only a few feet of visibility through the thick fog. From our viewpoint, about 100 feet from the starting line, we could only make out a faint silhouette of the cars on the starting line. It was hard to focus on anything with a thick white mist surrounding the cars as they made their final preparations before being let loose on the mountain. In all, 71 competitors would take the green flag, but only 62 would finish. Last year’s winner Robin Shute and his Honda powered Wolf TSC-FS took the overall victory with a time of 10:09.525, an impressive feat given the absurd weather conditions.

One would wonder how the race would have turned out if weather was not a factor. There is no denying Robin earned this victory. The second-place car, a near stock, if you can call a 250K dollar Porsche 911 Turbo S stock, driven by 1991, 2002 and 2005 overall winner David Donner finished 25 seconds behind Robin. The remaining field of top 10 was a who’s who of motorsports that included some legends like Rod Millen in his record holding Pikes Peak Toyota Tacoma, his son Rhys Millen in a Porsche GT3R Twin Turbo, Jeff Zwart in a Porsche 935/19, Drift Champion Dai Yoshihara in a Tesla Model 3, and another overall winner Paul Dallenbach in a Sierra Alpha.

The 100th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is in the record books, and although no records were broken this year, one can only speculate as to what the 101st running of this historic race will bring.

See you at the Peak on June 25th 2023!

For more information on the race visit www.ppihc.org