"Monster" Tajima's Record-Breaking Pikes Peak Run

I brushed on this topic in my article yesterday, about the Higgins brothers both breaking track records in two different Subaru STi's on two different continents, but frankly it deserves an article of it's own: this Sunday, Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima, a Pikes Peak veteran since the early 90's, finally broke the 10-minute barrier up the world's most famous hillclimb.  And it's an impressive feat in a lot of ways.

Competitors have been saying for years that this was the year they were going to break the 10-minute barrier; Rod Millen was saying it back in the 90's with his insane 3S-GTE powered Toyota Celica hillclimb special, but it never happened.  Tajima wheeled his custom-built Monster Sport Suzuki SX4 hill climb special (all 910 horsepower of it) up the hill faster than anyone ever has before, and by a wide margin: he crossed the line at 9:51.58.  And there's video of the whole run, so you can see just how much of an utter badass this guy is:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VAJaZAV-gQ

Big things were expected of competitor Rhys Millen, with his custom-built 1000bhp Hyundai PM580, but he could only manage a 10:09 - still slower than Tajima's 2007 run of 10:01.

According to a spectator at the event, by the time the SX4 got to the top of the hill, it's life was effectively over - according to Tajima the car had started overheating 2 miles into the 12 mile course, and by the top of the hill the car was pretty much shot.  To cut 10 seconds off a record that no one's really even got to close to in 4 years, I've gotta say I'm impressed - this guy's driving abilities put showboaters like Ken Block to shame.