82nd Falken Tire Pikes Peak International Hill Climb - Mountain Goat

For me, conquering Pikes Peak is the biggest challenge in the world of motorsports. In any other form of racing, including rally, you're going to have a constant grip surface. It might be ice and snow, it might be gravel, but the events will stay somewhat the same. You go through four, maybe five, road surfaces on Pikes Peak, and that can change daily. As a driver, you need to adapt to those changes.

That challenge is why I'm here competing for the 12th time at the 82nd Falken Tire Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, the second oldest motorsport event in the United States. My Pontiac GTO drift car is entered in Group 5.

Here you literally race to the clouds. The 12.4-mile, 156-turn course starts at 9,390 feet at the point where, until a few years ago, the paved road gave way to gravel. The course then climbs to more than 14,000 feet. A total of 2.8 miles from the start has been paved since, ending just past the Picnic Ground straight. Fast, flowing turns lined by pine forests define the lower third of the mountain. There's quite a nice rhythm off the start. The lower section is all about carrying speed and momentum and flowing through the whole thing. You don't want to be sideways, just really smooth-straight braking, late apexing and linking the corners.

Leading out of Picnic Grounds is one of my favorite set of corners on the hill. Up through Gayler's Straits you're flat in third and it's all off camber, but you've got to be bold and carry the speed leading into Brown Bush. It starts with an off-camber, sweeping third-gear left, you stay really high on the crown to the left, late apex again, shift into second and try to make the right-hand hairpin as square as you can to carry your speed up the hill. The second corner exiting Brown Bush is Blue Sky (that's all you can see), a triple-apex left. Set the attitude of the car here and you don't lift through three corners. Get it right and it's the most sensational feeling ever.

Ski Area marks the start of the traditional second practice section. The elevation starts to climb more steeply, the corners start to tighten and large sections of the road have been treated with PennzSuppress, resulting in a surface akin to broken pavement. To be fast here you've got to change your driving style again. Within two miles, you're back to road racing. You've got two corners that repeat themselves in style. They're sweeping, uphill third-gear turns that tighten, the second of which leads into the Glen Cove straightaway. It's a pucker factor, but don't lift until you're past the guardhouse-the end of qualifying-and you come into an off-camber corner.

Another turn or two and suddenly you're above tree line. At the Elk Park hairpin you're back onto dirt and heading for Ragged Edge. Man is that a gutsy corner. You have to carry a lot of speed onto the straightaway and into the Ws.

The Ws begin a huge elevation climb (2,000 feet in two miles) and a long section of huge dropoffs. From here on out, there's a lot of respect for the road. You don't hold back but there's a place in the back of your mind that knows if you make a mistake in this section, it could turn ugly. You go in tidy on these hairpins, it's loose, get the drive out and look for the traction-and don't look over the edge.

Devil's Playground, 12,500-feet high and named for the way lightning bounces around between the boulders, lies at the top of the Ws and marks the beginning of the traditional third practice section and the final run to the summit. This is as high as spectators are allowed on race day and the final view for the thousands of fans who gather to see the cars streaking up a long straight and disappear over the crest.

Crossing a long saddle, the road is wide and fast with several blue-sky crests and sweeping turns. There's no pucker factor for me until Devil's Playground. I treat everything up to here like a normal rally corner. You ignore the cliffs and the dropoffs, or you won't be able to drive with the commitment you need.

From Devil's Playground on up is what sorts out the men from the boys. This is fourth gear, over 100 mph! My father taught me a great trick here. He told me to stay flat on the hammer until I saw the top of a mountain crest at the center of the road. That's the braking point.

These are the hairball critical crests. You're flat over the crests and still in fourth for the charge downhill into Bottomless Pit, which is named appropriately. Make a mistake here and you plow through a low stonewall and fall at least 1,700 feet before you hit anything. Past the Pit, you shift down into third for the corner and the uphill into a second flat crest. Around a false summit and down again into a damn fun right-hander brings you to Boulder Park, a hairpin leading into an uphill combination left-right-left into a sweeping right-hander.

Out of Boulder Park, it's a huge drive up through the finish. But there's this little kink that people are starting to call "Rhys' Corner." You only get a corner named for you if you make a mistake. You wouldn't think it's much, but in 1997, driving a Toyota Supra, I came through here sideways ready to clip this off and understeered straight into the rocks. I launched the car, landed backwards and left it in a pile sitting there. We qualified the next day but the car hasn't been square since.

Next up is Cog Cut, the last left-hand hairpin. The road bends around the summit to the right into Olympic, the last hairpin where the view over the edge is truly heroic. It's the one place you don't want to make a mistake. Then a sweeping left-hander brings you to the 14,100-foot summit.

That run, at race speed in my V8, rear-wheel-drive GTO, would've taken just more than 13 minutes-during which I would've climbed almost 5,000 feet, made 98 gear changes, and hit speeds more than 110 mph.

The course record belongs to my father, driving his turbo 2.1-liter, all-wheel-drive, tube-chassis Toyota Celica in 1994, at 10 minutes and 4.06 seconds.

You've got to love this place.

Race ReportSCCA Prorally Championship Presented By Hot WheelsThis was the first year a full ProRally was built around the PPIHC.

Special Stage One followed the Hill Climb entrants' qualifying session, running from the start to the course's halfway point at Glen Cove. Brit John Lloyd and co-driver Pauline Gulik led the way in a rented Libra Racing Hyundai, with Leon Styles/John Dillon, Doug Shepard/Pete Gladyz and Rhys Millen/Chrissy Beavis less than five seconds behind. With their day over by 10 a.m., the teams had plenty of time for service. They needed to sleep early, however, as the rally cars had to be at the toll gate ready for SS2 at 2:00 a.m. the next day.

Overnight rains left gravel washed across the road in a number of inconvenient places, but that didn't slow Paul Choiniere and Cindy Krolikowski. A 15-second stage victory gave the Group 5 SRT-4 an 8.6-second lead over Lloyd, with Millen and the Richards 15- and 20-seconds back. Travis Pastrana came into Engineer's much too fast and barrel-rolled over the ditch.

Moving up the hill to make way for PPIHC motorcycle practice, the rally found the sunrise start of SS3 delayed as organizers waited for snow and ice near the summit to melt. Although grooved drag radials have been the tire at recent events, Patrick Richard switched to gravels, Styles stayed with slicks and Richards' Gp N WRX was a little more than a second quicker than Styles' Open Class EVO on the run from Cove Creek to the summit.

As is always the case at Pikes Peak, road conditions changed for the better as the sun melted a still-frozen road and competitors running after the first 10 had a significant advantage. Lloyd's Tiburon lost its clutch within sight of the finish line and lost 10 minutes before enough competitors reached the top to push the crippled car over the line and keep the team in the rally.

Race day dawned clear, and SS4 and the first half of the PPIHC climb went off without a hitch. Styles and Dillon found their form, winning the stage by 21.7 seconds over Lloyd/Gulik and opening a 9.1-second lead over the Richards. Andrew Barnes and Ieuan Thomas were just behind Lloyd in Libra's second Tiburon. Rhys Millen's GTO Gp 5 drift car lost its power steering three turns in, slowing him considerably through the next 153.

As the rally cars and PPIHC competitors came down the hill during the lunch break, thick clouds rolled in. Within an hour, the rain, lightning, hail and snow started, dumping several inches on the summit and more than an inch at Devil's Playground. Organizers cancelled SS5, giving Styles and Dillon their first ProRally victory, ran the rest of the PPIHC competitors to Glen Cove and called it a day. Patrick and Nathalie Richard were second, maintaining their lead in the championship. -Tim McKinney