The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is a long standing tradition at Colorado Springs in the US. It is also known as the second oldest motorsports event in the US. It is a sport which proves to be quite challenging because at the end of the day, everyone is challenging themselves to beat their best time up the hill. The course doesn’t have any guard rails so it is extremely dangerous as well.
This year, Rhys Millen climbed the 14,114-foot Pikes Peak in an electric car, and he did it in style by achieving an insane time of 9 mins and 7 secs. The electric car is a DriveEO PP03, a 1.2hp/kg supercar. This isn’t exactly some stripped down Prius. It is a proper race car and guess what? It produces 1367bhp and 2160Nm of peak torque!
Check out the video below.
It is weird that you can’t hear the car as much as you would be used to (think F1 and other motorsports).
The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC) it isn’t perfectly safe even if you are a professional driver. If you noticed in the video, drivers are literally driving at top speed, at the edge of the grip they can achieve from their vehicles and yet there aren’t any guardrails on the road.
In one instance, Randy Pobst who drove a 2009 Nissan GTR during this Pikes Peak challenge, had some bad luck and literally flew off the cliff. Check out the video below, it really is difficult to even view it especially at the moment he lost control.
Thank goodness that he came out unhurt and everything was ok. Still the Pikes Peak Hill climb is definitely one of my bucket list especially together with a Toyota 86. With any luck, I hope I can achieve it sometime in the near future.
