Positive, the drive up Pikes Peak at full pace is harrowing, however the experience down may even be worse. “It’s terrifying,” quips BimmerWorld’s James Clay, now a four-time entrant.
The race up, he explains, is considerably predictable. Most lessons permit tire heaters, and the schedule usually delivers probably the most favorable monitor situations to the quicker qualifiers.
BimmerWorld returned to Pikes Peak with the Bergsteiger, the crew’s radical BMW M3. As driver James Clay tells us, the journey down may be simply as thrilling because the drive up.
However as soon as on the high of the mountain, 14,115 toes above sea degree, drivers should wait till the tip of the day to descend. By then, temperatures close to the summit have seemingly plummeted–snow and ice aren’t out of the strange–whereas the slicks the vehicles put on have cooled to ambient. The street up doubles because the street down and, even on the comparatively sluggish return tempo, traction may be nonexistent.
Not like final 12 months, nonetheless, drivers on the 2022 Broadmoor Pikes Peak Worldwide Hill Climb, dropped at you by Gran Turismo, received to run the complete 12.42-mile, 156-turn course. And regardless of half a foot of snow falling the day earlier than the massive present, the street was clear by race time–although it remained moist in locations. “It was moist, and variably moist,” James notes. And there was fog, too, particularly close to the high.
Robin Shute, final 12 months’s champ, repeated to take the general win–his third title–in his Wolf single-seater. David Donner, one other Pikes Peak common, took second place in a brand new Porsche 911 Turbo S. The hole between the highest two finishers: some 24.5 seconds. Ending third total was David Donohue, one other common, in a Porsche GT2 RS Clubsport.
James once more drove the Bergsteiger, his store’s tackle the E36-chassis BMW M3. Earlier than this 12 months’s Pikes Peak, it obtained some revision: new suspension, new aero, new bodywork and new retro graphics. Regardless of the climate and the truth that it’s robust to kind a automobile for an occasion not like another, James piloted it to second within the Pikes Peak Open class and eleventh total.
