Travis remained seated in his car as we swarmed around it.  The engine was happily rapping along at idle. Even though it’s July, the air at the top of Mt Washington is quite cool. With my driving suit unzipped the sweat underneath made me almost a little cold. Maybe it was nerves. I was definitely still shaking from my first race run of the weekend. Travis sat quietly for a minute, nodding as he got some messages over the radio, or maybe his phone, I don’t remember. He smiled, did a couple fist pumps into the steering wheel and we knew he had it. He had broken the record. The drivers at the top of the hill suddenly, and again for the hundredth time, became Travis fans. He rolled down his window and said something to the effect of “We did it guys!”

WE.. had broken the record. We all cheered and the cheering was catharsis, relief and celebration that everyone there, at the top of the hill at the end of the weekend, had come out alive and with their cars intact. Travis was our representative. He was outside sales. He was the validation that what we were doing all week was important, the figure against whom we compared our own times and the personality we would cite when seeking validation with our non-enthusiast friends. You might have heard of him, yes.. I’m racing Travis Pastrana this weekend at one of the oldest, most historic auto races in the United States.

I’m not new to hillclimbing. I’ve been doing it since 2001 in New England and down in Pennsylvania where there is also a robust championship series. My friend Bill, my brother Nick and I have been at it for a while. I haven’t raced much in the last 10 years. I did Climb to the Clouds in 2011, then in 2014 which was the first time I had driven since 2011, after 2014 I did a track day in preparation for 2017 so a total of roughly 4 days in the car over 7 years. Not great. I always tell people that I don’t feel like I forget how to do it but it does seem to take a couple days to get on the pace.

I have to admit that when I signed up for the event I shopped around classes a little bit.  My car fit into a couple however I absolutely, without a doubt had to race against Higgins and Pastrana this time. In 2014 Higgins ran a 6:09 with his rally class STI restricted to a spec’ 34mm inlet on the turbo.  I was blown away by his performance.. If my memory serves me Travis had a mechanical in 2014. He was under pressure then, having done the much argued “unofficial” record with Red Bull earlier, he had to do it for real with everyone watching. I remember in an early 2014 practice I got to the top of the hill and my brain nearly exploded when someone texted me that I had run only a few seconds off Travis. Later in the day, I talked to my friend Chrissie Beavis, his co-driver only to learn that the run was done entirely without turbo boost, so they basically had 100-some-odd-hp and still beat me. Back to the drawing board.  In 2014 Higgins stayed calm and did Higgins to win and impress everyone with his control and consistency. They were in the rally car class so I didn’t have to race them directly. This was the big change for 2017. In Unlimited class, I surmised that, on a great weekend, I could get third behind those two and despite being off their pace, still get on the podium with two legends. I was up near the top of the results time-wise in 2014 but the gap between me and them was as large as it had ever been.

To add some perspective to the growing (or deepening) 2014 pool (the last event held there before this summer) also brought Todd Cook from CO who essentially roped his buddies into coming which was just what the event needed. Those “Pike’s Peak” guys did Open class with my friend Bill and his 240 RS MAXI so I didn’t have to worry too much about how fast Dan Novembre’s VQ Twin turbo “Novembre Special” was, or how much grip Bill’s 240 had with its new aero package. I was in the right class, with the sedans that looked like sedans and drivers that I respected.

2017 also brought a new Factory Fiat team composed of Kevin Wesley and Sara Price. Price was a multiple time Motocross champion and Wesley, a hired hand who has scored big finishes at Pikes Peak and on the track around the country. Fiat hauled their giant trucks full of equipment and engineers up a few days early and rented the hill for practice. They joined the Subaru Semis in the upper parking lot with the Colorado guys while the rest of us schlubs were in the lower field swatting at bugs and trying to keep our pop up tents from blowing away. Must be nice to get extra practice I thought to myself. Even to do some recce the week before would have been a good idea.

Practice days are always frantic and I told myself that if I’d learned anything from Hillclimb it’s that people let nerves get to them at this event. The New England hillclimb contingent almost never place well here. It’s like an hour from the usual events but it might as well be the upside-down because they always have trouble. Kevin Gale who usually is at the top of the pile with his Troyer Modified had what he would probably call an embarrassing and unusual off right at the bottom of the hill in 2014. Another New England driver lost a wheel launching off the start line (it wasn’t tight). Others crashed or talked themselves into a bad performance or out of a good performance. Some competitors told me in private that they are scared of Mt Washington and just won’t do it because of the drop offs.  It might have been my distance from those events, or driving in general but I felt no pressure this time. I don’t remember if I told anyone but I was fairly certain I could get third if the car held together. I didn’t want to telegraph it. I also had a new philosophy that I kept private about trying to have an athletic performance. I watched Higgins drive the hill what seemed like 100 times in 2014 and then go back to the hotel and workout. No bullshitting around, no sitting in the sun. I wanted to treat this event like that but as a small team I knew that meant the car had to be good and not require too much work to keep me up and out late. Stay focused, stay rested. I even got out a couple times for some bike rides with my friend and crew chief Mike to keep grounded. He’d give me advice on how to focus on what was important, tune out the noise.

There was a lot of built up anxiety about getting through tech inspection. Don Taylor, the chief tech inspector and also competitor is a notorious hard-ass about tech and the safety considerations about this particular climb put even more responsibility on him. Before the first practice I stood in a dirt parking lot with a bunch of other drivers who were either pushing or starting their cars to drive them up 10 ft, then shutting them off again as we approach the tech inspection garage. I chose to get some help and push mine rather than flatten my tiny battery by starting the car repeatedly to drive it towards tech in the long line. The lot was dusty and hot, as it always was. The car was already dirty and that bothered me. It’s hard to keep things clean at a hillclimb. At least it wasn’t raining. I tried to time my entry into the tech line so I caught it at a pretty good time, maybe 6 cars in front of me meant not much standing in the sun. Everything this weekend is planned, everything is timed. Get through tech, then do as many practice runs in the street car as possible.  A really pretty white Subaru Impreza had rolled in quietly behind me, an early GC8 with a proper turbo engine belonging to Charlie Gerry who is a tech at VT SportsCar and also a longtime hillclimber who has suspended his love for turbo Volvos to adopt the company marque. From inside the car the driver gets out to join us in line and it’s not Charlie but David Higgins driving Charlie’s car for him. Charlie was back at the Subaru camp working on getting David’s car dialed in for practice and apparently David graciously offered to see Charlie’s car through tech for him. This was a good time for me to feel David out, give him the old “how are you feeling?” Are you ready.. Etc. Of course he was. I asked him about my RCX tires and how many runs I could expect out of them before they gave it up. (I only had one set) He humored me and was super nice with a lot of advice. I don’t know if he knew I was racing him but it didn’t matter anyway because he was David Higgins and I was not.

During the two days of practice I got to catch up with old car-friends. I talked to the Subaru guys from VT SportsCar for a while. I asked if I could admire the engine bay of factory STIs. I wanted to see what they’d cooked up for this event. The media said 600hp. I thought that might be impossible having built Subarus for 10 years. Not for 6 minutes uphill, under full load. Well, maybe 600 at the crank? I tried to rationalize it being close to what mine could make. “ok , ok you can look but only for a second” I craned my neck under the super light carbon hood and started scanning around at the turbo, then at the antila….. “Ok too close.. Visiting time is over” the hood shut and we laughed. Company secret. The Pleasure Evo has no secrets. It’s just a solid car that treats me right.

On day two of practice I knew that Travis would get the win that weekend. He set off with a good pace. Something seemed wrong with David Higgins, who went into the weekend as the hill record holder. Higgins might recount differently but he seemed rattled and he never seems rattled. He is the ultimate professional who is probably difficult for Subaru to market because of his level headedness. He isn’t extreme in any way.  I felt that when Travis got on the pace Higgins was both surprised and maybe a little frantic, although he never showed it. Whatever was wrong the pressure was on and they both knew that they weren’t racing for a class win, they were racing for the hill record. The stakes were high, it was going to be Pastrana vs. Higgins and they both cared immensely.

I did a lot of car preparation for this event but not much driving as I mentioned earlier. In fact I did exactly 30 minutes of driving at a track day in New Hampshire. My car wasn’t aligned and I was on tires from 2011.  I learned after spinning in the bowl at NHMS on my outlap. -7 degrees of camber on the front right wheel only has that effect. I had installed the strut top 180 degrees out of phase the week before. The practice day ended a couple sessions later when I burst an intercooler hose. Exorcise the demons I thought. I’ve been enjoying bicycle racing so much in the last few years that it takes a really big event like Climb to the Clouds to motivate me into the huge effort of car and driver preparation. I was able to start preparing for this one about a year out with scheduled replacement of clutch disks, a cautionary removal and replacement of the rod bearings (I missed a shift at 2014 and if there was ever a recipe for super high revving misshifts it’s dogbox plus RHD.. Rod bearings were fine but new ones went in and finally some dyno time with Franz Diebold who did about 100 pulls with my car before we smashed a bottle of champagne on its bow and he sent me on my way.

Final run to race week.

2014’s final run ended with me on the side of the road, the ECU hit the high water temp cutoff and shut the car off with about 40 seconds to go in the whole event. I vowed nothing stupid like that would happen again. We set a failsafe removal condition on the ECU so I could “send it” in a situation like that and also, with contacts at C&R racing I was able to get the proper radiator core for hillclimb to avoid running temps up there in the first place. I spent some time improving the spares package and probably paid for employee bonuses at Rinkya Japan Auction management having bought a lot of stuff from Yahoo Auctions Japan to have a second of everything that I could possibly break. During this period I accidentally bought and shipped a nearly-useless rear subframe from Japan because I thought the auction was for a control arm (写真ではなく、販売しています !!). By June, my goal date, the car was ready and just sitting in the garage. We had VP unleaded race fuel, we had what I thought to be the absolute best tires too- BFG RCX thanks to VT SportsCar. Kudos to their sportsmanship for selling me some. I was fortunate to get support from Fifteen52 with a set of 17” Tarmacs in just the right offset and diameter for race day.

One week out and the fleet was maintained, my garden trailer (the spares trailer) was packed to the hilt. I had picked up a borrowed car trailer from Bill’s dad (I don’t own one)  and everything was staged for departure. I was wondering to myself which of my 1990s-built cars would have a failure first, hoping quietly that it would be on the way home. The rental house sleeping arrangements were worked out and the team from NickCz photography was ready to meet us there for the week to continue shooting the video that accompanies this article.  We had I think about 20 people in our rental house, 7 dogs, 4 pro photographers, 4 engineers, 10 or so street cars, 3 competitors and all the support we could ask for.

To get third, the car has to stay together. All you need is to get third.

Franz Diebold, my friend and wizard-advisor offered to come all the way from Virginia help Bill and I for the weekend. It was a surreal offer. We almost seemed like a professional team with all of the help we had. Franz would scour datalogs after every run. He refused to give me more boost because my throttle position each run was showing that I didn’t need it. As a result we never turned the boost past 14psi, roughly 320hp. I had something like 470 on tap but I came to understand that I would not need it this year.  Low boost is good for longevity, I guess! Franz did the same for Bill because his chronic 2wd wheel spin (his wheels were slipping approximately 98% of the time or something crazy like that) Franz kept us in a euphoric state of power desire/denial in our mosquito infested tent/ pleasure den. Day two of practice I told Franz that I was going to launch the car a couple times before we actually raced. Until then I was reserving the launch to preserve the car even though I had a complete spare drivetrain on the garden trailer. Franz gave me the thumbs up and we went through 3 iterations of launch control. The first was pretty good: better than I’d ever had actually. I had never had launch control because I was too lazy to retrofit a vehicle speed sensor. You can see my “worst launch in the history of mankind” Youtube video from 2009 if you don’t believe me. Be sure to leave a comment about how much I suck.  Today,  the car made all the right noises and snapped dutifully off the line, all four tires spinning gingerly. I caught second gear pretty well and the rest was history. After the run Franz watched his cell phone video of my launch a few times, plugged in and diddled the keyboard. “All set” was all he said. The next run was my first race run. I got the green light and before breaking the laser I dipped the throttle, pressed the clutch, said a prayer to my axles, knocked the dogbox into first and started in on the throttle (BRAAPAPPAPAAP Swooosssshhhhh), then releasing the clutch until I felt the disks just gently introduce themselves to the flywheel, I gave her full gas and O. M. G. the car snapped my head into the seat like I was on some amusement park hell-ride. The poor BFGs surrendered instantly and didn’t decide that they actually had a chance in this new life until third gear. It was the most magnificent moment I think I’d ever had in the car and when I returned to the bottom after what I thought was a decent run all I wanted to talk about was my launch.

“Franz, DID YOU SEE THAT!?”

of course he had. People were talking about my launch and how the car sounded and for all I cared I didn’t need to do a second race run. Franz asked me how fast I thought my car went to 60mph.

“No idea” I said.

“-well, 2.6”

Two-point-six seconds. This is what I get excited about.  Being the professional he is that still wasn’t good enough and he took back to his laptop for some more key diddling. The second race run had decidedly less wheel slip and I wasn’t ready for that. It came off as sort of a bobble when I caught second gear. We changed too much too fast. I should have just stayed hard on the throttle. It is what it is. The rest of the race run went well but it wasn’t faster than the first. The ambient temps were warmer, maybe I was a little tired. I tried to be smoother but maybe it was too relaxed.. You can watch the video and decide. When I watch myself race I get disappointed. Could have been faster. Too choppy on the throttle. I forget the giant frost heaves that make the throttle inputs more akin to a drum pedal, I forget the feeling of being on the edge of disaster while at the same time completely ignoring disaster and all I can think about is how I should and could have been faster. Two things right and then three things go wrong. It’s like a roller coaster set of tennis except every error is unforced.  

In Open class the Pikes Peak boys were gunning it out with Bill. Everyone was keeping it clean all weekend save for a couple over ambitious crashes in practice, one of a LS powered Z car made the rounds on car-internet. I was impressed at how fast the Coyote and “specials” were. The Colorado crew was also very cool to give this hill a lot of credit saying it was more challenging than Pike’s on a few occasions. They adapted fast and set some blistering times. Over in Unlimited class, my times kept me exactly where I thought I’d be. Jeff Denmeade, another hillclimb veteran from Australia who has competed in New England for a long time was in 4th behind me in Unlimited, also driving an Evo, Joey Kale from VT and in a Subaru in 5th. The gaps were promising and with one run in the books I felt good about the direction things were going.  Bill was having a similar weekend, running edge to edge on the road, praising his aero package for the newfound ability to temper the 240rs Maxi’s will to run free and wild. Bill ended up missing the podium to the CO boys by three seconds that weekend. He ran faster than I did in his 240. Later, we both remarked at a very controversial but hushed push start for one of his competitors that had them breaking the start laser at the top of first gear, easily a 3 second marginal gain. Bill didn’t press it because shit happens and those guys were so nice, Colorado was a long way to come and Bill, like Travis and David, did not come to get third place in class.

With run 1 in the books I sat at the top on a craggy ledge on the edge of the parking lot with other competitors who were also on a post run- withdrawal. From where we sat we could see miles down. We could see the dirty hairpin at the Craigway and the final two competitors, David and Travis were due around it soon. From our perspective cars on that turn were tiny specs. They’d round the Craigway turn, disappear then reappear minutes later on another visible part of the road as they approached our outlook and the last right hand kink at the finish line 100ft below our dangling shoes. The helicopter following the Subaru team floated over the hairpin at the end of the long dirt section and we knew the first factory Subaru was due through any second. I imagined being on the third step of the podium. It was almost reality. Suddenly, the tiny Subaru in the distance went straight off the road at the corner. Did that happen? The helicopter hung in the air for what seemed like 5 minutes. WOW. What did we just see!? We were all pacing. Was David ok? It was David, right? We rationalized that it was and that he was also ok because there was no medical response. We got blips over the radio but not much more. David’s crash was confirmed as well as his well being. Everyone at the top knew that the turn, while dramatic, wasn’t the worst place to go off and our thoughts eventually went away from worrying about his safety to speculating on what had happened. David did not complete one race run. Nothing in the books meant a heartbreaking DNF for him and no shot at the record. His 6:09 from 2014 still stood but he knew it wouldn’t be for long. Later we learned that in the rolling shallow right hand turns of the dirt section he got lost, or miscounted and he thought the hairpin was the next turn, not the immediate turn. He entered with far too much speed and actually made a really good effort to save it. It just didn’t pan out.

There was a delay.The drama could not have been higher. Subaru had one more chance at this record, one run. Well, technically they had two runs for Travis but you never want to sandbag at Mt Washington. It could rain any minute and destroy your second chance. Thus, it must be rationalized as one run. All of the people there for Subaru, the preparation, the hotels, the car development, the marketing.. All of it hung on Travis,  normally not the driver you want to bet it all on. The one you’d bet all on was in a ditch at the Craigway. You gotta finish to win and I allowed myself about 2 seconds of imagining what it would be like if Travis had a mechanical and I ended up winning Unlimited class. It felt wrong. Things already felt wrong, I was supposed to get third. The helicopter abandoned it’s post and zoomed out of view. When it came back minutes later, it brought Travis and Travis was moving like a rocket. I had watched about 50 cars come around that turn in the distance and Travis’s car was operating in an alternate time space. We all gasped. A couple of minutes later after hearing the antilag lead him in like a drummer leading troops into battle, Travis’s STI got airborne (only two cars did this) on the final right hand kink at the finish and landed with about 5mm between his left front wheel and a 2000ft cliff as his car slid sideways over the finish line on a 10ft wide road. 5:46 Ok, so that’s how it is. He had just redefined what was possible. A new record.

Later in the afternoon Travis managed the impossible again and shaved another two seconds off his 5:46. Perhaps they also have a “Send it” knob in the factory STIs. They would never tell me. After celebrating his afternoon run at the top of the hill we coasted down the hill and waved at all the crazy fans that had the motivation to spend the day above the treeline in chilly weather. What a feeling.

My finish position was now the second step with Higgins crash. I still wish it didn’t go that way for Higgins but there I was standing behind the stage that held the podium, talking with Jeff Denmeade, the big Australian that got third and Travis who was still so pumped about his finish. I asked him what it would take to beat that time in 2020. We both sort of shook our heads, I mumbled something incoherent about aero or building a special hillclimb car. The big moment had come. I was about to get on the stage and then onto the podium in front of so many respected racers and fans, cameras, bloggers and there I was with Travis-freakin-Pastrana. Someone pinch me. Jeff Denmeade looked at me and said “I’m going to hit you in the nuts before we go up there” It was sort of a blur. I snickered, Travis shook his head. I looked at Jeff with a nod, well here we go. The announcer called Jeff’s name to come around the stage to the podium and at that very moment he punched me right in the balls and scurried off laughing. The pain was unbelievable. He actually told me he was going to do that and then he did it. I didn’t even heed his warning! Travis saw from the corner of his eye. Jeff I’m going to kill you. The moment of a lifetime and I’m trying my best to not double over in pain. Travis wouldn’t take his hands off his crotch throughout the whole ceremony in fear of Jeff getting him too (check the pics) and I swore I was going to blast Jeff in the face with Champagne.

The next time this event will be held is 2020. Everyone on our crew was committed and energized after this year.. I could feel it even during the anticlimactic process of packing as we prepared to leave the hill.  I had finally found the limits of the car on this hill and I’m sure that I could shave at least 30 seconds off next time in the same car. More experience, more practice and some changes based on feedback from this year’s setup might be worth even a little bit more? Time will tell.

A couple days after the event I called Nick Czerula, friend and videographer who had been with me throughout this journey, filming everything you see in the video. What a weekend, we recounted. We were wasted but not too wasted to realize that most of the things we planned and predicted in the early interviews actually happened. Things rarely work out that way. It was like throwing a basketball over your shoulder after telling your friend “hey watch this” and having it catch nothing but net, only second place net. Still all net.