The Pikes Peak Hill Climb: Everything You Need To Know

Formula 1 has the Monaco Grand Prix, and endurance racing has the 24 Hours of Le Mans. NASCAR has Daytona, IndyCar has Indianapolis, and rallying has Finland and Monte Carlo. Speed freaks head to Bonneville, and two-wheel thrillseekers take on the Isle of Man TT.

These are all crown jewels in the world of motorsport, but even as a comparatively niche discipline, the world of hillclimbing can muscle in among them with a feather in its own cap – Pikes Peak.

First run in 1916, people have flocked to this mountain in Colorado nearly every year since to test their mettle on one of the most fearsome courses in the world of motorsport. With the 103rd running taking place on 22 June 2025, here’s a crash course on this one-of-a-kind event.

What is a hillclimb?

Erm, it’s fairly self-explanatory, isn’t it? Hillclimbing has been a thing since the car was in its infancy, and started off when the mere act of getting up a small incline was an achievement in itself for the sputtering, spindly-wheeled nonsense being built in those early days.

The format is nice and simple – it’s basically a time trial, with the goal being to set the fastest time up a point-to-point course.

Hillclimbing is still one of the most popular forms of amateur motorsport in the UK, but here, our courses tend to be short, sub-minute blasts through pleasant parkland, with Goodwood the best-known. Pikes Peak, being in the US, is a bit… bigger. But we’ll get to that.

Where is Pikes Peak?

Pikes Peak – the mountain – is in Colorado, and is in the southern part of the continent-spanning Rocky Mountain range. Located about 60 miles south of Denver, it’s the 39th-highest mountain in the US and is named after American explorer Zebulon Montgomery Pike. 

That last bit isn’t particularly relevant, but we just wanted to point out the fact that Zebulon Montgomery Pike is a real name that somebody had. And no, we don't know what happened to the apostrophe, either.

Can I have a quick history lesson?

A gravel road was first built to the summit of Pikes Peak in 1915, and the Hill Climb began the following year, conceived by the road’s financiers as a way of promoting it.

For the first few decades, the event was a largely American affair, with cars ranging from homebuilt specials to the same sorts of sports cars and open-wheelers that could be found racing on circuits. After a one-off appearance in the inaugural 1916 event, motorbikes became a regular fixture from 1954, until being barred again on safety grounds from 2021.

It was in the 1980s that the race started attracting the attention of works efforts from European manufacturers, with Audi and Peugeot starting to slug it out on the mountain. This was followed by a wave of Japanese manufacturer efforts in the 1990s and 2000s, with Toyota and Suzuki racking up a string of victories.

Since then, the victors have been a mixture of these big-budget manufacturer efforts and the odd ludicrous homebuilt machine. Electric cars, meanwhile, had appeared on and off since the 1980s, but really started to gain prominence in the 2010s. This isn’t just a marketing thing, either – the summit of Pikes Peak sits at 14,115 feet. At this altitude, combustion engines are gasping for oxygen, not a problem faced by EVs.

The course itself has undergone a few changes in recent years. Until the 2001 running, it featured a 100 per cent gravel surface, but from 2002, the nearby city of Colorado Springs – responsible for the maintenance of the highway – began to gradually tarmac it. By the 2012 running, the entire road was paved, bringing about a significant change in the sort of cars that enter the event.

What’s the course like?

Long, twisty and high. Specifically, it’s 12.42 miles long and sees competitors negotiate 156 turns, many of them tight hairpins. And as for altitude, the start line alone is 9390 feet above sea level – nearly twice as high as the summit of Britain’s tallest mountain, Ben Nevis.

It then climbs up an average 7.2 per cent gradient to the finish line, which, as we’ve already mentioned, is at 14,115 feet. While much of the lower part of the course winds through forestry, the trees largely disappear around the halfway mark, and there are precious few guardrails either – cars going over the edge isn’t unheard of, and it’s fairly remarkable that ‘only’ seven competitors have died during the race’s 109-year history.

What’s more, even in June, when the event is typically held, temperatures at the summit can hover around freezing. In other words, it’s not an event for the faint of heart.

What sort of cars race there?

All kinds. A lot of the attention tends to be focused on the Unlimited class, which, as its name suggests, is a no-holds-barred category with very few rules on what can enter. As a result, it tends to produce some properly bonkers machinery, much of it purpose-built.

There are plenty of other categories, though, encompassing near-production cars, specialist time attack and GT racing cars, and purpose-built open-wheelers. There’s also an exhibition class for more experimental stuff.

In the past, entries have been even more diverse, encompassing everything from the now-banned motorbikes to modified versions of the enormous, big-bonneted trucks more often seen hauling trailers across America’s highways.

Who holds the record?

The outright record belongs to Frenchman and double Le Mans winner, Romain Dumas. He’s won the event overall five times (and could be on for a sixth this year, as he’ll be piloting Ford’s latest entry, the Super Mustang Mach-E).

He broke the overall record, though, in 2018 with the Volkswagen ID.R, a mind-boggling purpose-built electric prototype. Its 7:57.148 time remains the only sub-eight-minute run on the full 12.42-mile course, and nothing’s come close to beating it since.