Volkswagen’s big-budget, record-breaking I.D. R may have dominated the headlines from Pikes Peak this year, but it was far from the most interesting story at the mountain. Every year, there are dozens of smaller teams whose road to Pikes Peak includes everything from last-minute thrash-wrenching to driving the car…
About a month ago, Romain Dumas squeezed himself into the fully-electric Volkswagen I.D. R and laid down the fastest ever climb time up Pikes Peak: 7:57.148. Today, VW has released every video angle the company collected of the record-smashing run.
A couple of weeks ago, the Volkswagen I.D. R electric race car broke the all-time record at Pikes Peak. It was the first car to ever set a time under eight-minutes, and now there’s a video of the full 7:57.148 run.
Going up Pikes Peak on a nice day at race pace is a feat for the brave, but climbing the mountain in foul weather with poor visibility is pure lunacy. This year, Victor Kuhns was the last person to make it all the way up Pikes Peak before officials paused the race for foul weather and shortened the course, and you…
The Germans aren’t exactly known for being laid-back on a good day, but the morning of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was particularly stressful.
Pikes Peak has long been one of the most fascinating motorsport venues in the world. It’s still the wild west of motorsport, where budgets, engineering, and driver talent are the main factors in how fast you can go. Ingenuity and engineering are rewarded, because there is hardly a rulebook, there is no balance of…
It’s hard to grasp exactly how crazy the idea of racing up Pikes Peak really is from photos or maps. This year 77 cars and bikes of all shapes and sizes rocketed toward the sky in one of the world’s greatest races, braving steep drop-offs and treacherous bends. But what does that really feel like?
Volkswagen took a car to the famous Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with the intention of beating the record for fastest electric vehicle up the mountain, but it didn’t just beat that one. It also beat the all-time record—leaving both so far in the dust that all the dust had probably settled by the time they got…
Yeah, that just happened. Romain Dumas climbed behind the wheel of Volkswagen’s electric I.D. R and just beat the all-time Pikes Peak record from Sebastien Loeb by setting the first-ever time under eight minutes.
In the late 1970s, Pikes Peak saw an influx of small lightweight open-wheel Neaman-Dreager roadsters powered by Porsche 914 aircooled flat-fours with barely 100 horsepower. These little under-1000 pound cars were taking the fight directly to the larger and more powerful USAC-style front-engine sprint cars and Indy…
A Jannarelly Design-1 OSC decked out in “Official Safety Car” branding was set to do a demonstration run between the motorcycle and car run groups at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, but it crashed Thursday afternoon, reports KOAA. The car veered off the road in nearby Colorado Springs and crashed into the…
A good fictional character once said, “I just wanna go fast.” That’s a noble pursuit, yet when you delve into the world of racing, you come up against so many rules and regulations in most series prohibiting you from so much that you just want to tear your hair out. Not so much at Pikes Peak.
Volkswagen’s new I.D. R Pikes Peak electric car set an untouchable qualifying time of 3:16.083 today with Romain Dumas behind the wheel, the company announced today. Qualifying only uses the first 5.2-mile section of the course, yet the pace demonstrated today shows that the electric record they want to claim on race…
Electric cars aren’t a new thing at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, a 156-turn mountain course where both drivers and automakers go to prove themselves. But running an EV comes with challenges, and Volkswagen had to figure out rapid charging for its 670-horsepower electric prototype in a setting that caters…
Volkswagen wasn’t kidding around when it said it wanted to take on the record for fastest electric car on the annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb—that was obvious when it showed renderings of its “I.D. R” race car. But now the real car is ready to go, and Volkswagen said it’s faster than a Formula One car.
Another day, another reminder that our future is straight out of a sci-fi movie. This Volkswagen race car looks beamed in from a not-so-distant future where the rich zoom from place to place in electric supercars with glowing company logos while the rest of us choke on the air quality left by the gas guzzlers of…
If you’re not yet familiar with Rod Millen’s Leadfoot Festival, you really ought be. In the same vein as Goodwood’s Festival of Speed hillclimb, Rod Millen has crafted his own hillclimb in New Zealand on his own property, which he lovingly refers to as ‘Leadfoot Ranch’.
The Pikes Peak hillclimb is one of the most dangerous and challenging events in racing. The course is 12.4 miles long and climbs 4,700 feet to the summit of the mountain at over 14,000 feet above sea level. Volkswagen is making an all-electric race car to compete in the hillclimb next year.
Travis Tollett was amazing. I met him my first year at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 2010 and we have been friends since. He lost the ability to walk in a racing crash, and when he realized he couldn’t drive anymore, he started co-driving for his friends. At least he still went to the top of the mountain…
Last year, the Tesla Model S P90D shot up the 12.4-mile, 156-turn Pikes Peak International Hill Climb course in well under 12 minutes and set the record for the fastest “production” electric vehicle on the course. But this year, the long-doubted Faraday Future destroyed its time by more than 23 seconds.
