Merlin at the 2016 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

[merlin]

Hi Lancer fans,

As some of you may know, I have once again made the journey to Colorado for the annual Pikes Peak hill climb.
This year was the 100th anniversary of the event and as usual it was an amazing motorsport event to be involved with.

My task was to tune the Evo8 driven by Australian tarmac rally champion Jeff DENMEAD and the car was entered in the TIME ATTACK 2 class for "production" cars. This class may not be run next year as the rules are somewhat ambiguous and TIME ATTACK 1 class is very much the dominant class where more or less any mods to a production car are allowed including huge aero components.

Anyway, the venerable Evo8 proved itself ever reliable and an easy car to race on the mountain.
We had no major issues to contend with during the weeks leadup practice and the crew had a great time on the mountain.
This year we stayed in a rental house in Cascade at the base of the Pikes Peak Highway, which essentially cut a half hour travel time in the morning, giving us a much appreciated later wake up time. As usual, practice started at about 5:20am Tuesday to Friday and I would do my tuning thing while the rest of the crew looked after tyres, cameras etc.

As usual, race day was stinking hot, which affected a lot of cars with several retirements.
The Evos data log shows the water temps hitting 113*C at one point, going up through the switch backs approaching Devils Playground.
And this was after we had made some cooling duct improvements which saw a 10*C drop in water temps during practice.
Needless to say, practice sessions in the cool of early morning are not representative of a typical race day conditions.
And yes, it did snow on the summit in the afternoon before the riders and drivers returned down the mountain.
One of our US buddies, Cash Singh, was not able to get enough traction on the upper section of the course to complete his run.
And this was after being turned around three times to start the run from the start due to others misfortunes.
Cant imagine how he must have felt.

Fortunately there were few race day "accidents" and only a handful of drivers had to restart.

This link will take you to the youtube vid, which will open to full screen.
It is a composite of all the onboard race day cameras and was assembled/edited by Mike Walsh of ROADRACE ENGINEERING.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_rSTlfwDXE


Here is a link to Jeffs race day drive from the SoCalEvo site. Note it wont open to full screen:
http://www.socalevo.net/content/

Our good friend Victor Kuhns from New Mexico and his TIME ATTACK 1 Subaru retired earlier in the week during practice with a damaged engine. The crew got it stripped but suitable replacement parts were not available.
TIME ATTACK 1 class had many interesting and indeed formidable entries, there probably was not a car there making less than 500hp and I know some were at least 700hp. All were sporting impressive aero components.
The air is pretty thin up there and aero attack angles can and need to be very aggressive.

I was happy to meet and befriend (PPIHC rookie) Rodney TU, who resides in Qld but is from Taiwan.
Rod was driving a new Palatov with a turbo charged 1300cc bike engine.
An amazing car but the team were struggling with tuning issues during practice so I lent them my wideband AFR meter and was able to help steer them to a working solution for race day. Rodney's time of 10.06.1 was nothing short of fantastic and got him 3rd in UNLIMITED Division and 11th overall.


More images from the mountain, including a number of stunning early morning practice shots:
https://frontstreet.media/2016/07/05/ri ... rspective/


And another excellent edited and composed video from wind star studios:
http://windstarstudios.tv/2016_PPIHC_Mt ... nmeade.mp4

Cheers
Dave

[Mystique]

Are you planning on coming to Tassie any time soon?

[merlin]

More great video links added to the first post.