LONDON: Robin Shute hails from one of the flattest counties in England, a region whose highest hill is just 105 meters above sea level, but no Briton has conquered the heights of motorsport like he has.
The 34-year-old Norfolk native, who moved to California after college to work for Tesla, has been the overall winner of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado for three of the last four years.
America’s second oldest auto race, first held in 1916 and also known as The Race to the Clouds, starts at 1,440 m and climbs to 4,302 m over about 20 km of paved road with crests and switchbacks and windswept cars.
Shute, who first contested the event in a video game as a child, is the only Brit to win the overall title and is now planning the next step.
“I’m aiming for the hill record, that’s my path now,” he told Reuters this week while accepting the prestigious Segrave Trophy at London’s Royal Automobile Club.
“I’m working on a new car for next year that will break the record, not just kind of sneak up on it.”
Shute said it would be “insanely fast” – a 450kg car with 1,000hp and almost twice the downforce of a Formula 1 racer.
This is comparable to a fully tanked Formula 1 car with similar performance but weighing around 900 kg.
Shute described conquering the mountain as a basic but deeply satisfying challenge – a battle against physics and the changing weather.
“You have a corner where you have to get used to where the car is and where the hill is, and then you have to go flat out. And the next corner comes at you as a blind right hander over a ridge at about 180-200 km/h,” he said.
“I always say downhill (timed) is the scary part because you go slow and you have enough time to see all the places where you could go and crash. It gets a bit busy on the way up.”
MOUNTAIN LOVE
“I fall in love with every piece of the mountain year after year,” said Shute, who joins American motorsport greats Mario Andretti, Al Unser and Rick Mears as Pikes Peak winners.
“This year it was the middle section and I really got dialed in. For me, the feeling of being at the limit in the car up the hill or of being pretty close is unbeatable. It’s the feeling I’m chasing.”
The overall record was set by the winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Romain Dumas, in 2018 in an electric Volkswagen ID.R with a time of seven minutes and 57.148 seconds.
“We’re getting there, we’re now adjusting the sector times of the ID.R at certain points,” said Shute.
The combustion engine record belongs to nine-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb, who drove a Peugeot 8:13.878 in 2013.
Shute is sticking with the internal combustion engine, convinced it will stay faster on the mountain than electric, but he said the future could be something else.
“I think a fan car is the next step in performance, more than what drives the car,” he said, referring to a British-designed McMurtry electric car that uses two fans to pull air in from under the car and additional ones to generate downforce.
“This could be the next very disruptive technology for the mountain.”
Previous recipients of the Segrave Trophy, first awarded in 1930 for “the most outstanding demonstration of transportation by land, air or sea”, includes seven-time Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton.
Hillclimbing is one of the oldest forms of motorsport, with Briton Shelsley Walsh dating back to 1905. Founded in 1913, the Aston Martin sports car brand takes its name from Aston Hill in southern England.