Pikes Peak: The Race to the Clouds That Eats Cars and Spits Out Legends

The Mountain No One Should Be Able to Climb… and That Everyone Wants to Conquer

In November 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike looked up at the peak that would one day bear his name and declared something history has never forgotten: that summit would never be climbed by man. Almost 220 years later, men don’t just climb it — they do so at over 200 km/h, in cars that generate more aerodynamic downforce than a Formula 1, on an open mountain road with no safety barriers and with the cliff edge just centimeters from the asphalt.

Welcome to Pikes Peak. Welcome to the Race to the Clouds.

This is the first installment in a series that Not Enough Cylinders is dedicating to the monsters that dare take on this mountain. Today we set the stage. In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce the beasts.

---

What Exactly Is Pikes Peak?

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC), popularly known as the “Race to the Clouds,” is an annual timed hillclimb held each summer in Cascade, Colorado, near Colorado Springs, in the Rocky Mountains.

The technical data for the course is brutal:

• Length: 19.99 kilometers (12.42 miles)
• Corners: 156 in total, with no guardrails along most of the route
• Start altitude: 2,862 meters above sea level (9,390 feet)
• Finish altitude: 4,302 meters (14,115 feet) at the mountain summit
• Total elevation gain: 1,440 meters of continuous climbing
• Average gradient: 7.2%
• Estimated power loss in combustion engines: up to 30% due to reduced air pressure

There’s no return lap. No second chance. You leave from the bottom and climb to the summit. Alone. Against the clock. With the mountain deciding whether it’ll let you reach the top that day. Because at Pikes Peak there’s a saying that perfectly captures the race’s philosophy: “The Mountain Decides.”

---

America’s Second-Oldest Race

The first Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was held in 1916, making it the second-oldest motorsport competition in the United States, surpassed only by the Indianapolis 500. It was founded by Spencer Penrose, a businessman and philanthropist from Colorado Springs who in 1915 transformed the narrow carriage road crossing the mountain into a proper highway. His aim was to promote Pikes Peak as a tourist destination. What he never imagined was that he was creating a sacred monster of world motorsport.

The winner of that first edition was Rea Lentz, who completed the climb in 20 minutes and 55 seconds in a Romano Lemon Special — a homemade car he built himself. To put that in perspective: the current outright record stands at 7 minutes and 57 seconds. In just over a hundred years, times have been cut nearly in half.

The event had to be suspended when the United States entered World War I, resuming in 1920. And since then, except during World War II, the race has never stopped. Over a hundred editions. Over a hundred battles against the same mountain.

---

The Track: From Gravel to Asphalt, and How It Changed Everything

For decades, Pikes Peak was a dirt race. A combination of asphalt and gravel that made the climb even more unpredictable, more dangerous, more wild. Cars would throw up clouds of dust through the corners in the middle section, and drivers battled ever-changing surfaces across the 20 kilometers.

Everything changed in 2011, when the road was completely paved. Since then, all competition has taken place on asphalt from start to finish. The results were immediate: times plummeted. In 2012, for the first time, a driver broke the 10-minute barrier in the top category. What had been the territory of legends became the territory of extreme engineering.

The track is still the same mountain, with the same 156 unprotected corners, with the same void beside the tarmac. But now cars can attack it with full power from the very first meter.

---

The Drivers Who Made History: A War of Surnames

The history of Pikes Peak is, in large part, the history of a few surnames that appear time and again in the results.

The Unsers: The Family That Devoured the Mountain

For decades, the Unser family was synonymous with Pikes Peak. Louis Unser was the first great name in the competition, accumulating 9 victories before retiring, earning him the title of “King of the Mountain.” But his nephew, Bobby Unser, went even further: 13 victories in total, making him the true king of the mountain — a figure that still stands unmatched. Bobby also won in the single-seater category 9 times during the period when Pikes Peak counted toward the AAA and USAC National Championship (1946–1970).

The European Invasion of the ’80s: Group B Comes to the Mountain

The ban on Group B cars in the World Rally Championship in the mid-1980s had an unexpected consequence for Pikes Peak: the manufacturers who had developed those extreme machines needed another stage to use them. They found it in Colorado.

In 1984, the first European drivers arrived. Michele Mouton with the Audi Sport Quattro became the first woman to win the race, the first non-American to do so, and in 1985, the first person to complete the climb in under 12 minutes (11:25). In 1986 and 1987, Walter Röhrl took victory for Audi. And in 1988 came the moment that would turn Pikes Peak into a global legend forever.

Ari Vatanen and the Peugeot 405 T16: “Climb Dance”

In 1988, Finnish rally world champion Ari Vatanen climbed Pikes Peak in a Peugeot 405 T16 and shattered the record. But what truly went down in history wasn’t the time — it was the footage. Director Jean-Louis Mourey filmed a short movie of that climb titled “Climb Dance.” The images of Vatanen pushing the Peugeot to its absolute limit, one hand on the wheel while the other shields his eyes from the blinding sun appearing above the ridgelines, became one of the most important audiovisual documents in the history of motorsport. If you haven’t seen it, stop everything right now and find it.

Monster Tajima: Nine Victories and an Entire Era

Japanese driver Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima is perhaps the pilot most associated with the modern era of Pikes Peak. He won for the first time in 1992 with a twin-engine Suzuki Cultus (400 CV per axle), and from 2006 was virtually unbeatable for six consecutive editions through 2011. A total of 9 victories that place him level with Louis Unser.

Sébastien Loeb and the Peugeot 208 T16: The 8:13 That Stunned the World

In 2013, nine-time WRC world champion arrived at Pikes Peak with a Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak developing 875 CV. The result was historic: 8 minutes and 13 seconds (8:13.878). A time so stratospheric that it remained practically untouchable for five years, with a margin of nearly 40 seconds over any other rival.

Romain Dumas and the VW ID.R: The First Sub-8

In 2018, Volkswagen arrived at Pikes Peak with a specific mission: break 8 minutes. The weapon was the Volkswagen ID.R Pikes Peak, a fully electric prototype with over 500 CV and none of the altitude limitations of combustion engines. The driver was Frenchman Romain Dumas, already a two-time overall champion (2014, 2016, 2017).

The result was pure history: 7 minutes and 57 seconds (7:57.148). For the first time in over a hundred years, someone had broken the 8-minute barrier at Pikes Peak. And they did it in an electric car. The demonstration of electric vehicles’ potential in competition couldn’t have been more emphatic. In 2024, Dumas added his 5th outright victory, cementing himself as one of the all-time greats of the event.

---

The Altitude Effect: Why Pikes Peak Is Different from Everything Else

This is where engineering gets truly complicated. Pikes Peak isn’t just a steep mountain with dangerous corners. It’s a moving aeronautical laboratory.

At 4,302 meters of altitude, atmospheric pressure is significantly lower than at sea level. This has brutal consequences for internal combustion engines: they can lose up to 30% of their power because there’s less oxygen available for combustion. An engine producing 500 CV in the paddock may arrive at the summit generating barely 350.

Teams have developed ingenious solutions over the years. Turbochargers are the most common response: they compress the intake air to compensate for its lower density. Electric motors, as the VW ID.R demonstrated, don’t have this problem because they don’t depend on combustion. That’s why electric cars have dominated the recent outright records.

For drivers, the problem is also physiological. At that altitude, the brain receives less oxygen, which can reduce cognitive capacity by up to 30%. Many professional teams equip their drivers with oxygen systems inside the cockpit. Memorizing 156 corners with a brain running at 70% capacity is a challenge that goes far beyond driving skill.

And then there’s the weather. Pikes Peak is held in summer, but “summer” in Colorado at 4,300 meters means it can snow at any moment. Conditions change in minutes. Practice sessions take place before dawn, because the road is public and only available to the competition during restricted hours. Drivers learn the course with their headlights, in darkness, in temperatures that can drop below zero even in June.

---

The Race Today: Cars, Motorcycles, Trucks and Everything Else

What makes Pikes Peak unique in the world of motorsport is its extraordinary variety of classes. It’s not just a race for sports cars. In the same race day, you’ll find:

• Unlimited category cars (the most extreme prototypes on the planet)
• Open Wheel (single-seaters)
• Time Attack (prepared cars from modified road cars)
• Pikes Peak Open (including spectacular American muscle cars)
• GT4 Trophy (production-based competition cars)
• Exhibition (the class where the great electric prototypes have competed)
• Motorcycles across multiple classes
• Quads and side-by-sides

The average number of entrants per year is around 130 drivers from across the world. And the spirit of the event remains exactly what it was in 1916: man and machine against the mountain.

---

Why Pikes Peak Matters Beyond Competition

Spencer Penrose couldn’t have imagined what he was creating when he organized the first race in 1916. But Pikes Peak has been, for over a century, a testing ground that has driven automotive technology forward in ways that few events in the world can match.

Automatic transmissions, improved braking systems, adaptive suspensions, high-performance all-wheel drive, and now electric powertrains: all have found in Pikes Peak an extreme laboratory where their real limits are tested. The mountain’s conditions — with its changes in altitude, temperature, surface and visibility — create a test scenario no engineering bench can replicate.

When Volkswagen broke the record in 2018 with the ID.R, they weren’t just promoting a racing car. They were demonstrating to the world that electric propulsion could be competitive in the most extreme conditions on the planet. That message was worth far more than any advertising campaign.

---

What’s Coming: The Monsters

This is just the introduction. The mountain, the stage, the historical context. Now the interesting part begins.

In the upcoming installments of this series, we’re going to dive deep into the cars that have made Pikes Peak what it is today. The Peugeot 405 T16 and 208 T16, the Volkswagen ID.R, the Tajima Monster Sport machines, the Unlimited prototypes that push engineering to the impossible. Each one deserves its own article. Each one is a story of engineering taken to the absolute limit.

Because if there’s one thing Pikes Peak teaches us edition after edition, it’s that the mountain doesn’t respect reputations. It only respects preparation, courage, and speed.

The Mountain Decides. But the Monsters decide to attack it anyway.

---

Have you already seen Vatanen’s Climb Dance? If not, you have homework. And come back to this blog for the next installment of the series.