[size=200]Pikes Peak Automation Hill Climb 2015: Inspections and Preparations[/size]
Pikes Peak, Colorado. Each year the mountain comes alive with enthusiasts, hoons and nutjobs making the pilgrimage to see one of the toughest hillclimbs in the world. Cars of all varieties, drives, visions, and power line up to tackle the 156 turns, climbing over 1400m over 20km of open mountain, cliff and no guardrails. There’s no armco to stop you from shooting off the mountain into oblivion, just your tyres, your brakes, your foot, and whatever deity you wish to place your faith in, if any.
Bespoke tuner and race outfitter Gryphon Gear is pleased to host the Pikes Peak Automation Hill Climb of 2015, with the help of closer-to-home scrap specialists Desert Motors. We’ve inspected a whopping sixty five vehicles (sixty seven, if we include Gryphon Gear’s own proof-of-concept prototype, and the truck it came in, among the list, though Gryphon Gear will not partake in the official standings, being the hosts). That’s 12 in the production class, 8 in the tuner class, 6 in the open class, 13 in the heavy class, 12 in the vintage class and a whopping 14 in the insane, no-holds-barred unlimited class. There’s a great amount of variety in the entries, with approaches varying in each and every class from representative models that embrace the spirit of the class with maybe a few minor modifications (or not), to the balls out crazy tuned-to-within-an-inch of the rules.
While testing for the prerequisite reliability (or whether the car even runs at all), we gathered the data of all the power outputs, and in particular, the power to weight ratios of all the cars. I’ve compiled them in a (big) graph for your amusement. The car names have been colour coded by class.
It was at this point that we had to scratch one entry: the PoMoCo lorry overheated and burst into flames on the dyno. Clearly it needed more ventilation, but as it was, it got the fire extinguisher and was thus rendered incapacitated. [size=85](Addit: Even a last ditch effort to revive the engine proved futile, and so it was that the lorry had to remain out of the official running this time around.)[/size]
That setback aside, all the other entries were eventually prepped and ready to go! Power moves the wheels, but power isn’t everything… who is it that will take the line honours in this year’s PPAHC?
[size=200]The Race to the Skies[/size]
Each car was called from the muster to the starting line, trembling and growling, agitating to be released up the fully paved road. The first cabs off the rank were the production cars, ranging from the barely modified, vintage-in-its-own-right Nissan S12 driven by one ‘Maverick’ from the S12 Gazelle Appreciation Club, to the modern purpose built budget sports car packing far more horsepower than the price tag would ever suggest from Znopresk, to the crazy “let’s stick an engine that doesn’t fit into the engine bay and hope the adjudicators don’t notice”, or the “I’m pretty sure these turbos aren’t stock but it’s still road legal I swear” and the “do you even muffler bro?” Several raised (and scorched) eyebrows later, the sound of roaring blocks and keening turbos echoed over the hills amidst the frantic cheers and hoots of the onlookers egging each competitor on.
The results were astounding. With the recently paved surface covering all of the road, every car that came to the mountain was no-compromises, road going, and by and large had superior traction on the bitumen. With a crop of fierce drivers, the average time was unprecedented, with every time well under twelve minutes. And that was just the slowest class. One step up, into the Tuned class, for the (actually) heavily modified sports cars, and the competition stepped up a notch. Better materials, slightly stronger handling, more aggressive tunes… at least for the most part. Interestingly, PMC chose to enter a largely unmodified new Rally Zoope into this class, perhaps to test the capability and the pace of this off-the-floor model, but the pack it faced were generally almost unrecogniseable transformations. If Baltazar’s Production entry’s engine barely fit into the bay, this one simply… didn’t. But all eyes were on the Polish entry, with a giant wing and canard crudely slapped on the rebuilt body of a much older design, would it hold together and do something spectacular?
The Open class was an increasingly obscure one, with somewhat outdated rules. Most of the competitors in this class belonged to the teams that had submitted multiple cars: the Centauri Performance Vehicles from the US, Banks from UK, the Germans, up and coming newcomer Blitz and the i4 NA hatch diehards HYPERSPEED, and the S12 Gazelle Appreciation club. There was only one lone independent contender, again, from Poland, PolMot with a prototype that looked like a Radical, but had a max output of something from outer space. With rules that somewhat resembled the Pro Class Time Attack circuits, competition at the pointy end of this small class was fierce, and the times started dipping into the seriously serious nine minute zone.
Finally, came the three unrestricted classes, the Heavy, the Vintage and Unlimited. With the opportunity to go crazy, the majority of the entries did just that. There was the crazy big, crazy old, and the crazily crazy and each class had a veritable Cornucopia of variety. The Heavy class was particularly amusing, as it so turned out that many companies had the same idea: if the supply truck had to travel to Pikes Peak to back up their car entry, why not run the truck too? Many entries turned heads simply because it did not appear physically possible for such weighty vehicles to be so agile. As the tyre size and quality was unrestricted, many of the trucks were running special racing compounds in never-before seen tyre sizes, giving them astounding grip able to pull lateral forces of in excess of 1.7g at speed, even more than a Pagani Huayra! As these engines were the largest, they also had the most potential raw grunt, with some of them pushing out enough to match a top fuel dragster. There were many murmurs of disbelief as alongside the lorries, trucks, buses and vans of this class, came the luxury saloons, sedans and, in one case, a luxury hot hatch. The range of times in this class was possibly the widest, with some trucks scarily faster up the mountain than competitors of every other class with the (merciful) exception of Unlimited.
Vintage class gave the real enthusiasts a chance to admire legends in action. Cars like a frankenmonster BMW/Chevy hybrid, the old Rally Zoope, a niche favourite, and the Kaminari from the lost generation of Skyline, could strut their stuff alongside the decidedly more bonkers race-oriented Achernar, in its original, traction-control-mandating trim. Pushing an average power to weight ratio of 800-900bhp:tonne, several former C-class cars found themselves battling for line honours in this hotly contended category.
Finally, it was time for the Unlimited class. With no restrictions on anything except that the car should have at least some chance to make it up the mountain in the first place, most of these cars were purpose built for one thing: to race up this particular peak. The remainder were bonkers and plain weird prototypes that defied any other classification, as well as one converted dune basher, and one extreme tuned production car, both brave choices with this bespoke field. The majority of this class broke through the vaunted nine minute barrier, making it by far the fastest class overall, some of the times even getting within cooee of the insane Seb Loeb record. Ultimately, less than a single second separated the winner of Pikes Peak, from the runner up.
Without further ado, here are the full results, first by class, then by overall classification.
Right before presentation, Gryphon Gear hosted our own exhibition: the running of their head-turning prototype, which made a big splash at Geneva earlier in the year, Mercury. With by far the highest power to weight ratio, many were interested to see how it would perform on such a technical track. While it also broke the nine minute mark, it was nowhere near as quick as the Pikes Peak tuned contenders. Driver Kai Kristensen remarked that while it was light and agile in the corners and reportedly hit speeds in excess of 320km/h (!!!), the unforgiving power curve and skew weight distribution made it a bit flighty under harder, faster cornering and coming out of low speed hairpins.
Then we dropped a surprise. We, too, would run the truck they stored Mercury in. Never before unveiled, Strop ‘borrowed’ the 700ci square turbo V8 used purely for maximum output research purposes and crammed it into a bus, which was then rebuilt to cope with the growing demands of our race team activities. While it was designed to destroy everything that was good and right, thankfully, according to main operator (in normal working conditions), lead mechanical engineer Hannah, the ECU is built to run different modes, such that the rev limit, boost and fuel mixture can be reduced so instead of a 700ci 3321hp drag monster, you can have a 1300hp eco boost, whatever the hell that means. Apparently the truck in eco mode gets 25mpg.
But they were here to show the truck in full flight, and in full flight, one could be glad that it was an exhibition, and not an official competitor, else it would have fairly embarrassed even most of the Unlimited field (Mercury included!)
Thank you to everybody who participated. There were far more entries than I anticipated, and many of you like the freedom to go a bit nuts. Congratulations to the overall winner, LeSpass. Damn, you know how to tune for a track, your track record in the ITA series is obviously not just a particular strength in that era.
Congratulations also to the other individual class winners: Dragawn, Jastrzab84, BurningBridges, Leo9613, and luilakkie. I’m pleased that each class had a different winner, though it also is worth noticing that some of you were competitive in other classes, and there were some who were runners up in other classes (like niall, and chipskate, with his crazy build that didn’t make any sense but somehow went insano fast if not for Dragawn…) but just missed out on the line honours.
Now, the Steam release is just about to come, so I imagine there will be a bit of a gap between tournaments. As for me, I have some articles to finish, so until then, enjoy the new update!
p.s. if I got your time significantly wrong, please let me know and I will go back and check it!
This is very easy to prove, by changing the various values of engine cooling on one of your overpowered cars on, say, Green Hell, then doing the same on Airfield. Therefore, the various advantages you would get in any given tournament would depend on the track selection. And that is why game veterans now run tournaments with track listings that are kept secret until after the deadline…
) but I tried to use different wing types and more vents to make SOME differentiation possible! 
