Ford SuperTruck wins Pikes Peak in a strong year for automakers
It was a good year for Ford and Romain Dumas this year at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. The team took overall victory, and thus the Open Class win, at the time trial. Dumas drove the F-150 Lightning SuperTruck up the course with a time of 8:53.553. He just beat out the entry from race car builder Wolf Racing, who snatched victory last year from Dumas and the Ford SuperVan 4.2.
The SuperTruck run ended up being slower than the SuperVan's though, which finished last year in 8:47.682. Ford reported that there was some unnamed technical issue during the run that brought Dumas and the SuperTruck to a complete stop on the course for a few moments. Ford estimated that it cost the run about 26 seconds. Regardless, that would still leave space between SuperTruck and the overall Pikes Peak record of under 8 minutes. That record is owned by Dumas, but behind the wheel of the VW ID.R.
Joining Ford and Wolf Racing on the podium was Hyundai. One of its Ioniq 5 N Time Attack cars finished in 9:30.852 with Dani Sordo at the wheel. It was one of a trio of Ioniq 5 Ns that finished, one being another Time Attack car, and the other being a basically stock example. That stock example, though, apparently had a powertrain calibration specific for Pikes Peak. That roughly stock Ioniq 5 N finished 26th overall and third in the Exhibition class, which all three Hyundais participated in. Its time was 10:49.267 with Ron Zaras driving.
The fourth and final entry in the Exhibition class was the quad-motor Rivian R1T. While finishing last in class might seem disappointing, that's not really the case. Gardner Nichols drove the Rivian up the hill in 10:53.883. That's about 30 seconds faster than last year's Rivian run, which is a major improvement. And being about 4.6 seconds behind a much smaller vehicle like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N isn't too shabby either, especially as each were basically stock models. Rivian also claims the fastest production pickup truck record up the hill.
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