I love that he stopped on course for 26 seconds and still managed to win. Incredible.
Photography Courtesy Ford
Out of all 61 entries that entered to compete, Ford's 1600-horsepower, all-electric F-150 Lightning SuperTruck won the 102nd running of the Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, brought to you by Gran Turismo.
[Live Thread: 2024 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb]
Piloted by Romain Dumas, the all-electric SuperTruck set a time of 8:53.553–and that's including an unplanned stop during the climb:
Driver Romain Dumas overcame a technical issue during the climb, coming to a complete stop on the course. That stop added about 26 seconds compared to his initial qualifying time. Quick thinking from Dumas helped to minimize the issue, as the Frenchman completely reset the 1,600-horsepower F-150 Lightning SuperTruck and continued his climb.
"Everything about this event is a challenge because it is unlike any other form of racing, you only have one shot," said Dumas. "We faced a challenge early on but that only gave me more determination to make up the lost time in the rest of the run."
Speaking of qualifying, the SuperTruck set a record qualifying time for the open class of 3:32.831–some 7 seconds faster than the 3:39.939 record-setting qualifying time set by the Ford Performance SuperVan 4.2 in 2023.
You can review the official results here, and you watch (or re-watch) the full event coverage below:
I love that he stopped on course for 26 seconds and still managed to win. Incredible.
Real shame no sports network bothers to show this historic and significant event. But we must make room for pro Cornhole.
Markhogue said:Real shame no sports network bothers to show this historic and significant event. But we must make room for pro Cornhole.
underrated comment
Or PFC !
In reply to lotusseven7 (Forum Supporter) :
They probably pay for TV time like most sports these days. Same thing in grocery stores - gotta pay for shelf space!
I don't think PPIHC has the $ to do so in house given the high production costs of actually filming the route! I do agree it'd be nice to see something better than what we have now from Mobil 1, which is basically a several hour infomercial with a few clips of cars thrown in... but apparently no one else will pay for coverage either.
Markhogue said:Real shame no sports network bothers to show this historic and significant event. But we must make room for pro Cornhole.
It would be a pretty difficult race to televise. The course is long (about 50% longer than the Le Mans circuit), so your only options are a couple of fixed locations plus a helicopter. We saw the helicopter video glitching out on the broadcast this year, and of course the chopper can only follow one car at a time. It's also a much smaller race than you might think watching the occasional factory effort. 10 years ago, for example, the only way to get race information was FM radio and that was a local station. I don't know about today.
Holy COW, I just looked up prices to spectate today. $300 per vehicle to camp plus $150 per person to spectate at Devil's Playground - and that's just race day. Looks like the money has arrived. I don't recall what it was a decade ago but it sure wasn't anything like that.
It took something like 8 hours to run this year, and it would make pretty boring television. The logistics of cleaning up the crashes and mechanical failures (of which there are many) are difficult. Then they have to red flag the other cars on course, let them go back down, refuel, and start again.
There's a YouTube feed with live coverage, now. No need for TV or FM radio.
It's an insanely hard thing to spectate. I'm stunned that there are as many people as there are that are willing to drive up the mountain at 3am and sit in fairly brutal conditions waiting to watch a car come by every 10 minutes.
The ticket prices may seem high, but they sell out every year. You can watch for free, if you're willing to hike 4 miles with a 3,000ft elevation gain. Starting from 10,000ft. I talked to a surprising number of people at Devil's Playground that hiked up. Most of them would have bought tickets, but couldn't because they were sold out. There are no more tickets because there are no more places to park vehicles on the mountain...
In reply to Tom Suddard :
If my own experience owning a new Ford sports vehicle is to be considered broadly applicable, it is not unusual for the vehicle to just require random stop-and-reboot times. Why would this be any different?
26 seconds though. Man, I bet that felt like an eternity.
My comment about race information a decade ago was "on the mountain". I forgot to add that bit. Looks like it might be possible to get wifi up on Devil's Playground these days, so maybe you can watch the race on your phone? I agree that it would not be compelling live TV.
I've been a couple of times. I'd probably go again, it's a pretty dramatic race even if you do only see a car every 4-5 minutes (they run more than one at a time). At the Playground, you can see a significant part of the course and there's some great machinery. We camped so the 3 am drive up the mountain wasn't a big deal - I just dropped the top on the Westy and puttered up. Janel didn't even get out of bed :)
I guess it must be more popular than it was in 2013, so the ticket prices are reflecting supply and demand. I just checked, and in 2013 it was $100 to camp and $40 per person to spectate.
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