Two mile high club
As a reference, with a car at sea level you can expect air density to be around 1.2kg/m3
In June 2019, Robin Shute became the first British driver to win outright at Pikes Peak, Colorado, the gruelling, 12.42-mile mountain course that winds its way up through over 150 corners from a start line at 9390ft above sea level to a finish line above the clouds at 14,115ft.
As a quick reality check on those heights, that means it starts at a point twice as tall as the UK’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis, and finishes at a point just below Base Camp on Mount Everest.
Pikes Peak International Hillclimb is a far cry from the venues we find in the hotly contested British Hillclimb Championship, where competitors regularly see a finish line below the 2400ft mark and have significantly less corners to contend with on the way there. If we go one step further and look at Robin’s home county of Norfolk, its highest peak being Beacon Hill, all of 344ft above sea level, it becomes an even greater example of how far removed competing at Pikes Peak is to anything racers can expect to find in the UK.
Prior to 2011, the last section of the road was loose gravel, and consequently favoured cars that resembled heavily modified rally cars with all-wheel drive, longer suspension travel and significant upper surface aero appendages to maximise cornering speed and aid traction under hard braking and acceleration, while coping with wildly varying ride heights. Since then, though, the course has become one continuous tarmac ribbon all the way to the top, and cars have become more akin to those found on a circuit, with lower ride heights, shorter suspension travel and more emphasis on controlling the aero platform nearer the ground.
As the road still follows the original trail, it isn’t like the billiard table smooth circuits of most FIA events. Some of the hairpins have significant
