Official HD video: Monster Tajima's Pikes Peak record run

The ‘Climb Dance’ video of Ari Vatanen’s epic assault on the 1988 Pikes Peak Hill Climb represents some of the finest motorsport footage available anywhere, but now comes an equally compelling vid of Monster Tajima’s record-breaking run at the annual dash up the 4302m high Colorado mountain.

The newly released official video was created by Tajima’s sponsor, GoPro, which has gone to extreme lengths to present a plethora of camera angles to give you every possible vantage point.

A bit of background about the event: the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC), also known as ‘The Race to the Clouds’, has been an annual event since 1916 and is contested by a variety of classes of Cars, Trucks, Motorcycles and Quads.

Competitors are faced with 156 perilous turns over a 19.99km course that climbs 1439m from the start (at Mile 7 on Pikes Peak Highway at 2862m) on grades averaging seven per cent.

The biggest difference between when Vatanen set his record and the present day is that part of the course has since been paved, which has obviously helped lower times. Rally fans may be crestfallen to learn that the entire climb will be paved for next year’s event, so crazy sideways action and huge rooster tails of dust will soon be a thing of the past.

For the record, Tajima’s Suzuki SX4 (in name only!) blasted up Pikes Peak in a time of 9min 51sec, smashing the previous record of 10min 01sec (also set by him in 2007).

What makes Tajima’s sub-10-minute record – which has been compared to Roger Bannister’s running of the first sub-four-minute mile – all the more remarkable was that he was just two weeks short of his 61st birthday when he set the new marker.

Adding to the degree of difficulty, his Suzuki lost its power steering and water pump in the closing stages, which meant he had to muscle the car through the final corners… meanwhile, water temperature was nudging up to 150 degrees as he crossed the finish line.

Word has it Tajima prepared himself for the Pikes Peak assault by eating vast quantities of salad during race week, but every trip to the summit during recce runs allegedly ended in a feast of chilli dogs and doughnuts.

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