Romain Dumas Wins The 2016 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

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Romain Dumas’ Norma M20 RD meeting the checkered flags.

The 100th anniversary Pikes Peak International Hill Climb challenge recently finished, with French racing driver Romain Dumas taking the top spot with a time of 8’51.445 behind the wheel of the Norma M20 RD (#30) in the Unlimited class.

Not only did Dumas break his 2014 record – a 9’05.801, also using a Norma M20 chassis – but he was also one of only two competitors this year to clear the 12.42 mile-long point-to-point course under 9 minutes, an achievement worthy of applause on its own. This victory also lands  only a week after Dumas successfully completed the demanding and memorable 24 Hours of Le Mans race with his team Porsche scoring 1st position in-class and overall. Dumas told Autoweek that ”it has been a dream to win both of these races, and now it has come true.”

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Tetsuya Yamano preparing to set sail in the 4-motor EV Concept based on current-generation NSX.

Coincidentally, this year’s meeting at the Peak hosted 100 participants, divided into 65 cars and 35 bikes. While there are numerous classes for drivers to slot into, the Electric Division proved to be very successful once again, taking three spots within the top five. Driving behind the wheel of the eO PP100 (#67), 2015 Pikes Peak winner Rhys Millen was the closest challenger to Dumas, closing out the weekend 2nd with a sub-9 minute run of 8’57.118. Not far away was Japanese driver Tetsuya Yamano who challenged the course with Acura’s 4-motor EV concept (#260). Although he didn’t manage to finish the run within 9 minutes, he set an impressive time of 9’06.015, settling at 2nd position in the Electric class and 3rd overall.

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Time Attack 2 Acura NSX driven by Nick Robinson.

Another driver readers should be familiar with is 9-time Pikes Peak Winner Nobuhiro Tajima, also known as ‘Monster Tajima’. Setting a run of 9’51.978 with the E-Runner Concept_One (#1) was enough to award Tajima the 3rd position in-class and 5th overall. Tajima also couldn’t break his last record – set in 2011 with a Suzuki SX4 – missing it by slightly more than a half second.

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Monster Tajima’s 1100 kW-worth machine for the Electric division. Fear is justified!

GTPlanet previously reported on two brand new Acura NSX models that would appear at Pikes Peak this year. The Robinson brothers were in charge of bringing these two cars across the finish line and they did it with very different results. Nick’s NSX (#173) participated in the Time Attack 2 class and finished 1st there (20th overall) with a time of 10’28.820. His brother James’ NSX (#902) was part of the slower Time Attack 1 class. By clearing the course in 12’58.402, he ranked 13th in class and 75th overall.

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The Pikes Peak Hill Climb challenge often hosts all sorts of curiosities, such as this Freightliner Cascadia (above). Spectators could also glance at Rod Millen’s Celica, which conquered the Peak in 1994 (below).

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Although we previously mentioned Polyphony Digital CEO Kazunori Yamauchi would be joining the competition at 2016 Pikes Peak challenge, Yamauchi did not participate. Instead, he was part of the safety car crew.

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Gran Turismo developer and producer Kazunori Yamauchi.

Be sure to check the official results, entry list and official website for more information on every participator. See you next year at the Peak!

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Comments (4)

  1. GordonS

    To be honest I can’t find any reason Kaz racing near those death-drops.
    Anyway, nice to see him at the location. Maybe we will see P.P. in GT in the near future..

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