Race to the Clouds: The Full Story of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

It began in 1916 as a marketing stunt for a Colorado toll road. Today it is the second oldest race in America, the most demanding hill climb in the world, and the home of one of motorsport's most enduring family dynasties.

Most great motorsport events were designed as motorsport events first. The Indianapolis 500. The Monaco Grand Prix. Le Mans. They were conceived as races, planned as races, and built around the goal of producing the best possible competition for cars and drivers.

Pikes Peak was not.

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb began as a piece of marketing. A wealthy Colorado businessman had just finished widening a toll road up the side of a mountain, and he needed people to know about it. The race he organised to promote that road has now run for 110 years, become the second oldest auto race in America, and grown into one of the genuinely irreplaceable events in world motorsport. The marketing worked.

This is the story of how a publicity stunt for a Colorado highway became the Race to the Clouds.

Spencer Penrose and a Marketing Stunt That Stuck

In 1915, Colorado Springs entrepreneur Spencer Penrose finished a project he had been working on for several years. He had widened and paved the narrow carriage road that ran up the side of Pikes Peak, converting it into a proper automobile highway. The road cost roughly 400,000 dollars to build and required draft animals, manpower, and a lot of explosives to carve out of the mountainside. Penrose charged a fifty-cent toll to use it.

To publicise the new highway and to drive traffic to his nearby Broadmoor Hotel, Penrose came up with a plan. He would organise an automobile race to the summit. He put up 2,000 dollars of his own money for the prize purse, invited drivers from across the country, and scheduled the first event for August 10 to 12, 1916.

The response exceeded any reasonable expectation. The race generated front-page coverage in 650 newspapers across the United States. The winner was Rea Lentz, a 22-year-old from Washington driving a homemade car called the Romano Demon Special. He climbed the mountain in 20 minutes, 55.6 seconds, and was awarded the inaugural Penrose Trophy. In the same race, Floyd Clymer, whose name would later appear on repair manuals in workshops around the world, won the motorcycle class on a Excelsior motorcycle.

Penrose had wanted to draw attention to his road. He had instead invented an institution.

The Road and the Rules

The course is 12.42 miles long, climbs more than 4,700 feet, and ends at the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak. There are 156 numbered corners. Some have sheer drops of 800 feet on the outside with no guardrail. The starting line sits at 9,390 feet above sea level, which is higher than most mountains in the eastern half of the country.

The altitude is what makes this event impossible to replicate anywhere else. An internal combustion engine loses roughly 30 percent of its peak horsepower between the bottom of the mountain and the summit, simply because the air is too thin to support combustion at full intensity. Brakes lose bite as the temperature drops. Tyres struggle for grip on cold, smooth asphalt that may be roasting in the sun a few miles below. Driver reaction times slow with oxygen deprivation. A car that is perfect at the starting line is fighting for survival by the time it crosses the finish.

The format compounds the challenge. Pikes Peak gives every competitor exactly one run on race day. There is no qualifying race, no aggregate over multiple laps, no second chance to fix a mistake. The time on the clock at the summit is the time that counts. A driver who has spent twelve months preparing for the event can have their entire season decided by a single moment of inattention on a road they cannot fully see.

The course was gravel and dirt for most of its history, with the lower sections paved progressively over the decades. It was finally and fully paved by 2011, a controversial decision among purists who felt that the surface transition was part of the event's character. The pavement is also what made modern outright lap times possible. The fastest cars in the world now climb a road that a hundred years ago required half an hour to summit.

Unser Mountain

In September 1915, before the Pikes Peak Hill Climb existed, three brothers from Manitou Springs named Louis, Joe, and Jerry Unser rode their motorcycles to the summit of Pikes Peak, one of them with a sidecar attached. It took them two hours and fifteen minutes. They had largely done it to prove it could be done. The Unser family had arrived on the mountain. They have not left since.

Eleven years later, in 1926, Louis Unser entered the actual hillclimb for the first time, driving a Studebaker. He did not reach the summit on that first attempt, but he came back, and he kept coming back. Over the next century, four generations of Unsers would race at Pikes Peak. The mountain was eventually given a nickname that stuck: Unser Mountain.

Louis Unser, known to everyone as Uncle Louie, won the event nine times across the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. His first win came in 1934 in a Stutz Special, and he kept winning through the pre-war years (1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, and 1941) before adding three more victories after World War II. He competed until 1967, when he retired after 42 starts at the age of 71. He paid his final entry fee with his Social Security check. He shared a rivalry with Glen Schultz across the early decades, and the pair won the event twelve times between them. Uncle Louie was inducted into the Pikes Peak Hill Climb Hall of Fame in 1997, and he was known by the racing world by another nickname for the rest of his life: the Old Man of the Mountain.

Uncle Louie's nephew Bobby Unser arrived in 1956 at the age of 22 and won his class on debut. From 1953 to 1962, the overall course record was broken every single year. The majority of those records were set by Bobby. He went on to win the event 13 times in total, including a 1986 return at the age of 52 in an Audi Quattro that broke his tie with Uncle Louie for most overall victories. Bobby Unser said it himself: he would rather run the Indianapolis 500 because it paid better, but for fun, he would rather run Pikes Peak.

Across the family, the numbers are extraordinary. The Unsers have collected 37 class and division wins, 15 course records, and 26 King of the Mountain crowns. That is more than a quarter of every overall victory in the event's history, all claimed by one family. Bobby's brothers Jerry and Al, Al's son Al Jr., Bobby's son Robby, and most recently fourth-generation racer Loni Unser have all driven the mountain. No other event in motorsport has been shaped by a single family the way Pikes Peak has been shaped by the Unsers.

The Mountain Goes International

Until the mid-1980s, Pikes Peak was a primarily American event. American drivers, American cars, American sponsors. That changed in 1984.

That year, Norwegian rallycross driver Martin Schanche arrived with a Ford Escort Mk3 4x4. Alongside him came French rally driver Michèle Mouton in an Audi Sport Quattro. Mouton, already a Group B legend in European rallying, finished second overall in 1984. In 1985 she came back and won the entire event outright, setting the overall course record in the process. It was the first time a European driver had taken the King of the Mountain crown, and the first time the event had been won by a woman.

Mouton's victory opened the door. The years that followed brought Walter Röhrl, Ari Vatanen, and then a long sequence of international challengers. Japanese driver Nobuhiro Tajima, universally known as Monster Tajima, won the event six consecutive times between 2006 and 2011 and was the first driver ever to break the ten-minute barrier on the course. He set that record in 2011, which by coincidence was also the last year the road still featured any gravel sections.

In 2013, Sebastien Loeb arrived. The nine-time World Rally Champion, driving a purpose-built Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak with around 875 horsepower in a car weighing barely 875 kilograms, ran the entire course in 8 minutes, 13.878 seconds. The previous record had been more than a minute slower. Loeb's time was so far beyond what was thought possible that thirteen years later it has still not been broken. It remains the all-time outright record for the event.

The 104th Running: Dumas Reclaims the Crown

All of which brings us to this past Sunday, June 21, 2026.

The 104th running of the Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb was won by Romain Dumas. The French driver climbed the mountain in 8 minutes, 18.202 seconds, in a 1,400 horsepower Ford Super Mustang Mach-E electric prototype, beating four-time King of the Mountain Robin Shute by just over eleven seconds. It is Dumas' sixth career overall victory at the event. He now sits one win shy of matching Monster Tajima's seven, and four wins behind Bobby Unser's all-time record of ten. Dumas also still holds the outright course record at Pikes Peak, his stunning 7:57.148 set in the Volkswagen ID.R back in 2018, which makes him as central a figure to the modern history of this event as anyone driving today.

The story of the day, as it so often is at Pikes Peak, was as much about what did not happen as what did. Defending King of the Mountain Simone Faggioli had taken pole position on Thursday, dominated free practice, and arrived on race day as the firm favourite for outright victory. A technical issue during his ascent ended that. He still finished third overall, but his window was gone. That is what this mountain does.

Elsewhere in the field, former NASCAR driver Billy Johnson won the Pikes Peak Open class on his debut, posting a faster time than several purpose-built open-wheel cars driven by veterans. Clint Vahsholtz won the naturally aspirated GT4 class on his 32nd Pikes Peak appearance. Laura Hayes won the turbo GT4 class and continues to hold the title of fastest woman on four wheels on the mountain. Twelve rookies took on the course this year, including Maciej Serafin, the first driver from Poland in event history.

Why the Mountain Matters

There are races that decide championships and races that decide reputations. Pikes Peak does not really do either. There is no points table to chase, no aggregate season standing. You win the mountain or you do not, and either way, you come back next year.

That is what has kept this event so beloved for 110 years. It is pure. A single run up a road through the Rocky Mountains, with whatever car you can build and whatever nerve you can summon, against the clock, the altitude, and the consequences of a mistake. The first winner in 1916 was a 22-year-old from Washington in a homemade car. The most recent winner is a six-time King of the Mountain in a 1,400 horsepower electric prototype. The drivers and the machines have changed beyond recognition. The road and the mountain have not.

If the great roads of motorsport are something you care about, take a look at our full collection of race track posters celebrating the most iconic circuits and courses in the world. From Pikes Peak to Spa to the Nürburgring, the roads that built the sport, ready for your wall.

Race 105 is next June. The mountain is not going anywhere.

Bring the great racing roads home.

Browse all our Pikes Peak Hill Climb posters and wall art at standingstartco.com.