Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima, who turns 61 later this month, set a new record at the 2011 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in his Suzuki SX4 Hill Climb Special with a time of 9:51.28. This time beat the old record, which he set in 2007, by 10 seconds. And he managed to do it without power steering or a water pump for the last few corners.
The multi-pump failure had Monster, visually, going slower than expected through the cool and extremely windy top corners, but still, there was enough time on the front end of the course to give Monster the win, and the record.
Rhys Millen and his Hyundai Genesis PM580 suffered, too, at the Peak with a brake failure four miles from the top. "I lost my brakes and had to go into the corner at speed. I'm still not sure how I made it." Rhys said after the run. Impressively, Rhys used the transmission in lieu of the brakes and finished with a heroic 10:09.30. Again, Millen's team had problems with transmission this year, breaking fourth gear the night before the race.
Rhys gets a hug from dad, Rod, who had earlier set the record in the Time Attack 2WD Class in Rhys's Hyundai Genesis drift car. Watching is Jeff Zwart.
The other big name in the Unlimited Class, Paul Dallenbach, fared even worse. The 1,307 horsepower (which we later found out was a limited number because the car spun the seals off the dyno rollers) Banks-powered, rear-drive racecar snapped an axle less than a mile into the race. Dallenbach had been running well during practice before the big race failure. It's a rough way to go home the last year that Pikes Peak will feature dirt.
Third place in the Unlimited class went to Frenchman Jean-Philippe Dayraut with a 10:17.707 in his 850-horsepower, GT-R-powered Dacia Duster. Not bad for a guy driving the hill for the first time.
Our group was stationed at the top of the hill, miles from the dirt section. Thanks to Youtube, however, we don't have to wait for official video from the fun section.
cjw88 says:
02:08 PM, 06/27/11
Wish I could've been there! I'll be catching all the footage of the event possible. Rally racing is so very unpredictable