MOTORSPORT: VW's sights set sky-high

Volkswagen is dominating rallycross, as it did the World Rally Championship for four years this decade and the group’s Audi and Porsche marques did at the 24 Hours of Le Mans before leaving it to Toyota, but now the VW parent brand has found a mountain to conquer.

It’s the highest mountain in motorsport – Pikes Peak in the western US state of Colorado.

Pikes Peak annually hosts the world’s most famous hillclimb, often called the ‘Race to the Clouds’.

The event has been held for more than a century, starting in 1916.

Six classes of cars as well as motorcycles go up a course almost 20km, climbing almost 1440 metres to the peak at 4302 metres.

Volkswagen has taken its first fully-electric racing car – a 500kW (680hp) machine dubbed I.D. R Pikes Peak – there and it’s being driven by Romain Dumas, a 40-year-old Frenchman who has won the climb three times in the past four years as well as being a multiple Le Mans victor.

VW has proclaimed that it is out to break the record of 8 minutes 57.118 for the climb by an electric car.

But it also has its sights set – even if it’s not making a fuss publicly – on the overall record of 8:13.878 set five years ago by a more famous Frenchman, nine-time world rally champion Sebastien Loeb, in the Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak.

Qualifying is held over the first 8.3km of the course and Dumas has been the fastest competitor ahead of Sunday’s single runs by 62 cars and 24 motorcycles.

Second fastest was a combustion-powered Norma M20 SF PKP driven by Italian Simon Faggioli.

Dumas’ successes at Pikes Peak in 2014, ’16 and ’17 were in Norma M20 RDs, but he said he had never experienced acceleration and power “like that in the I.D. R, which has two electric engines driving the front and rear axles and big wings front and rear.

The power output from the electric motors won’t diminish sharply in the thin air at higher altitudes as it does with a conventional internal combustion engine, even with huge turbochargers.

But Dumas said “everything still has to go right during the race”.

“We only have one chance (run up the full course),” he said.

“You can’t afford to make even the tiniest mistake.

“Le Mans is like a marathon, whereas Pikes Peak is the 100-metre final.

“Some of the passages at Pikes Peak are similar to the Nordschleife [the famed long circuit at the Nurburgring in Germany known as the ‘Green Hell’].

“The climb does not feel good. At the finish line the air is so thin that it is difficult to breathe, especially after the exertion.

“Now I’m finding that the feedback from an electric car is very restricted – there are nearly no noises from the engine or the gearbox.

“Normally these are important indicators for controlling speed.

“I only have what I can see outside and my display on the steering wheel.

“The lack of feedback makes it very difficult.”

There is talk at Pikes Peak that, if Dumas can maintain his qualifying pace for the entire run up the mountain, the VW could clock about 7 minutes 52 seconds.

That would be more than a minute faster than New Zealander Rhys Millen’s electric record two years ago in the e0 PP100 which had seven YASA-400 electric motors with eO controllers, peak power of 1190kW and peak torque 2520Nm.

It would also be more than 20 seconds better than Loeb’s outright record.