Motorsport has always been the ideal means for car manufacturers to trial their products and even carry out further technological developments. One of the oldest forms of motorsport is that of hillclimbing. As a means to demonstrate levels of engine torque, test hills exist at every vehicle proving ground in the world and, amid friction material dust clouds and the stench of burnt clutch linings, carmakers destruction test their vehicles’ capabilities daily on those very hills.
However, both off-road and on-tarmac rallying, as well as circuit racing are well-established motorsport parameters for most manufacturers. Only the really special ones would contemplate tackling ‘The Race to the Clouds’, which will become reality once again for Volkswagen on the 24th of June this year. The last time the company entered the international event was in 1987, with a spectacularly potent, twin-engined Golf model. It was runner-up.
Celebrating its 102nd annual speed-fest, the Pike’s Peak Hillclimb is located in Colorado, USA. Although it was originally a gravel road test, over the years it has become increasingly tarmac surfaced, all the way to its summit. The competitive course starts at 9,389ft above sea level and finishes, 156 corners and 12.42 miles later, at 14,115ft, at which height most conventional engines, let alone the drivers, are suffering from a shortage of oxygen.
It is a spectacularly exciting event and many of the roads run perilously close to punishingly steep drops that have even caught out some of the world’s finest drivers. While seemingly off the grid, as far as European, or Japanese, race teams were concerned, it was top French rally driver, Michele Mouton, at the controls of an Audi Quattro, who set a new course record in 1985 (11m 25.39s). It opened the doors to a run of international competitors and, when top ‘Flying Finn’, Ari Vatenen, tackled the course in a rally-prepared, one-off, Peugeot 405 Coupe in 1988 to set a new course record (10m 47.22s), in the process pipping the previous year’s ‘King of the Mountain’, German rally star, Walter Rohrl (Audi Quatrro), by a mere 0.63s, a die was cast.
By 2011, several times holder of course records, Nobohiro Tajima, a Japanese racing star, finally broke the 10m barrier, with a remarkable time of 9m 51.278s, in a Suzuki SX5 that bore no resemblance to any production car from the firm. The 2017 time set by Romain Dumas in a phenomenal 9m 5.672s, does not really compare with the reigning record holder, French rally phenomenon, Sebastien Loeb, in a Peugeot 208 ‘special’, when he crossed the line in 2013 in a scarcely believable 8m 13.878s.
Volkswagen realises that its challenge is made harder by the fact that it is using the I.D. R Pikes Peak, which is a racing machine powered by electricity alone. In fact, it is VW’s first all-electric racing car. Once again, Romain Dumas is being handed the responsibility for the assault on the hill. VW wants to settle a score and win outright. Less reliant on air pressure than a conventionally-fuelled engine, the electric power unit could deliver a star turn. If you want to follow the exploits as they unfurl, log onto volkswagen-motorsport.com.
