Following several successful planned test days at our home track of Sonoma Raceway in April and May, we finally arrived at the first Official Test Weekend ahead of the 102nd Running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC). This weekend took place on Saturday and Sunday June 1st-2nd, and as a rookie I was informed by the event-organizers that my performance across both days would be evaluated in order to make a final determination of my eligibility to race on June 23rd. No pressure or anything, but game on.

Jon, Mike, Lamson, Nate, and I spent almost an entire afternoon (there might have been beers involved) at the shop organizing all of the things that we would be bringing with us from California to Colorado. The plan was that if the car ran perfectly across two days and needed absolutely nothing at the end of the test weekend, then we would leave it behind in the safe and very capable hands of our friends at Winslow BMW of Colorado Springs.

As such, our 30-foot enclosed trailer was absolutely stuffed with spare parts (2x Flossman Motorsport carbon fiber splitters, just for example), Titan-7 T-P10 forged wheels (including some very special-sauce ones made in all white, thanks Eddie & Jimmy) wrapped around Toyo’s brand new DOT R-compound Competition tire: the Proxes R, and every tool/fluid/thing-a-ma-bob we could think of needing at the mountain. Of course, we also fitted our tow-vehicle with fresh Toyo Open Country tires for the nearly 3,000 mile roundtrip journey. A special thank you to Cameron, Karl, Dionne, Stan, and Steve from Toyo Tires for your partnership and support.

On Friday May 31st, the truck arrived safely with Jem at the helm in Colorado Springs. When we got to the dealership, we opened the trailer to discover an unfortunate surprise. One of the spare axles that had been previously secured had somehow broken free and fallen on the carbon passenger side-skirt. Doh! While this was definitely a major bummer, we lucked out in that the damage was mostly cosmetic and not structural; which meant no major impact to the performance of the part itself. Phew. Onward and upward…

The team immediately got to work on preparing for an early start the next day and there was a lot to do, including filling our Radium Engineering dry-break jugs with VP race fuel, and mounting the new specially made rain tires from Toyo that had just arrived at the dealership before we did. Speaking of which, I want to pause here to share tremendous heartfelt gratitude to Gregg, Bryan, and Derek at Winslow BMW of Colorado Springs for their generous support of our Pikes Peak effort this year. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met, and they have made us feel so welcomed at the dealership. Thank you so very much for allowing us to essentially “move-in” for the entire month of June and for letting use use your equipment, tools, and shop space. We really feel at-home there and I am so incredibly grateful for their hospitality.

Meanwhile, we also rigged up our brand new AIM SmartyCam 3 Dual which has prototype live-streaming capabilities that we intend to use during race week. I’m also still running my trusty SmartyCam 2 and SmartyCam 3 Sport too.

The next morning, we arrived at the mountain just before 4am and it was still very dark out. The schedule was tight, we would need to be setup by 5am, and following a quick driver-meeting we would go green until 830am; at which point we would need to be fully loaded up and off the mountain again before 9am, when the road became open to the public again.

On this particular weekend, Pikes Peak highway was broken up into two halves for practice/testing: Start Line to Glen Cove (Bottom Half) and Glen Cove to The Summit (Upper Half). Whereas during race week, it is broken up into thirds: Start Line to Glen Cove (Lower), Glen Cove to 16 Mile (Middle), and Devils Playground to The Summit (Upper). On June 1st, I was assigned to run the Upper Half and just before the sun rose fully into the sky I completed my first ever run up to The Summit of Pikes Peak. It was magical, and breathtakingly beautiful.

I would get two more runs on this day and it was a great learning experience for the entire team. We found out that our single 3000HD generator was not powerful enough to get the tire warmers above 150F degrees. As such, for race week we intend to get a second generator and power 2 tire warmers per side. Hopefully then, we can see 200F or more. Being forced to setup and breakdown quickly also meant that the team got really good at efficiently packing and unpacking, which will continue to come in handy through race week.

Ride-along with me for my fastest run of Day #1: a 6 minute and 30 second dash from Glen Cove to The Summit of Pikes Peak. I was really surprised by how bumpy it was up there! A lot of veterans told me that this might be the worst it’s ever been. Yikes. I look forward to fine-tuning the setup of my JRZ PROactive dampers with Eibach springs over the next few weeks before race day. I was however really happy about one thing in particular: my 12+ months of driving the mountain on the sim at home with AIM data analysis really helped. I was able to get my bearings fairly quickly, and just knowing which way to go on the mountain is more than half the battle. However, the sim also isn’t perfect. In my opinion, it's about 85% of the way there. But I did notice that some sections in real life felt shorter distance-wise than on the sim, like Upper Gravel Pit to Boulder Park, and 8 Mile to Engineers Corner. Conversely, I found Heitman’s HIll through Grouse Hill to Gilly’s Corner “easier” to navigate in real life, compared to on the sim. I’m definitely still digesting it all and taking it all in…

On Saturday afternoon, we brought the car back to Winslow BMW for a quick once-over before the next day. This gave us an opportunity to check the alignment, load a revised tune after Jei analyzed the data collected, and to change a few other settings. I also made the decision to swap over to our higher downforce front splitter because we hadn’t tried it yet. The other splitter was already making too much at sea-level during previous tests. Shout-out to Dominik Flossman for making us a custom one-of-one version with an additional wing on top. It looks absolutely wicked.

Once we finished up, we decided to head over to the Penrose Heritage Museum to learn more about the history of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. We also spent some time with Melissa, the CEO of PPIHC and Lisa, the Historian of PPIHC. Thank you both for your perspectives on the race, and for all of your help! I also want to thank Alex, the Events Manager and Dan, the Race Director— the two of them, along with everyone at PPIHC have been wonderful about guiding a rookie such as myself through his first ever race to the clouds.

The next morning, we were back at the mountain for Day #2 and this time we were set up and starting from Glen Cove in order to run the Lower Half of the mountain. Practice for this sector is incredibly important because it is the one that counts later during race week for my qualifying/starting position. It’s also the fastest and most technical part of the mountain.

A rare selfie for me on Sunday after my first run…something that isn’t obvious from this photo is that ever since Friday, I had been wrestling with a very irritated left eye. It had been red and very painful for several days. Outside of the car, I could barely look at my phone without tearing up, but fortunately adrenaline + Tylenol meant I was able to rally enough to drive all of the runs on both days. Oof. Fortunately, as I am writing this blog post you’ll be glad to know that I went to the doctor and confirmed it was simply due to a burst blood vessel that had become inflamed and irritated. I’m already a lot better now after getting home. Phew. And what you will notice from this photo is that I decided to run my o2 bottle on Sunday to see if it would help at all with my performance. As some folks know, for the past year I have also been preparing for Pikes Peak by getting healthier and becoming more fit. I lost 70lbs of fat and gained a good amount of muscle mass. This definitely came in handy at the top of Pikes Peak. I actually didn’t feel the need to use o2 at all on Saturday, despite climbing from 10K feet to over 14K feet. Pretty stoked about that. As for on Sunday and whether or not using o2 made a difference in terms of my driving performance, the jury is still out. Ha.

Ride-along with me for my fastest run of Day #2: a 4 minute and 21 second blast from the Start Line to Glen Cove. I would later find out that this was the 3rd fastest time recorded out of all cars and classes on Day #2. Sweet! Fun fact: the altitude is causing us to lose even more power than we anticipated. Looking at the data with Jei, I’m only starting at the line with 6psi of boost. By the time I reach Glen Cove, 2psi and by the time I get to Devils Playground, 0psi (less than 300whp). Pretty significant, considering the car makes 15psi (535whp) at sea-level back home. We will be working closely with Ben and Nick at EMtron over the next week or so to figure out how we can get things to run even more efficiently in order to squeeze out as much performance as possible. I’ll happily take every horsepower we can find at this point!

We are now only 12 days away from returning to Pikes Peak for race week. I can’t wait to be reunited with my team, our car, and for so many exciting events taking place that week:

• Car Tech Inspection + Driver Health Inspection: Monday June 17th AM

• Upper Section Practice: Tuesday June 18th AM

• Lower Section (Qualifying): Wednesday June 19th AM

• PPIHC Tech Talk at Winslow BMW with yours truly and fellow competitor Laura Hayes: Wednesday June 19th PM

• Middle Section Practice: Thursday June 20th AM

• Upper Section Practice (again): Friday June 21st AM

• Fan Fest with Toyo Tires in downtown Colorado Springs: Friday June 21st PM (come see my car at the Toyo booth — I’ll be giving out stickers!)

• Pre-Race Day Event at Winslow BMW with food trucks and drinks: Saturday June 22nd AM

• Race Day: Sunday June 23rd all day

See you there! And/or if you want to follow along from home, please visit: https://ppihc.org/2024-ppihc-race-day-live-coverage/ppihc-how-to-watch-and-follow and be sure to catch my posts on IG: @tomchutang