GoKawiilChevrolet provided flights from Albany, New York, to Denver, Colorado, and accommodation so Ars could attend the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—If you drive the 12.4-mile (20 km), 156-corner route up Pikes Peak, abiding by the posted speed limit of 25 mph (40 km/h), it will take you a good 30 minutes to reach the top. That’s assuming you resist the urge to stop and gawk at the infinite vistas that surround you along the way.
On Sunday, professional racer JR Hildebrand covered that same distance in just 9.5 minutes, ignoring the scenery all the while. He did it in a 1,250 hp (932 kW) hybrid-powered Corvette ZR1X, a car that you can take home yourself for about $210,000. It set a new production car record for the hybrid on a day when EVs and combustion-powered cars fought for mountain supremacy.
2026 marked the 104th running of the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, one of the most historic races on the planet. Since its inception, competitors have struggled not only to string together all those corners but to maintain speed all the way to the 14,115-foot (4,302 m) summit.
Up there, the air is so thin that climbing a flight of stairs can be a proper struggle. It’s just as hard on a combustion engine, which traditionally loses up to half of its power at the summit. The use of forced induction—turbocharging or supercharging—helps to mitigate that, but lately, the focus of many manufacturers has been on cars that don’t need to breathe at all.
Credit: TIM STEVENS There’s very limited testing and racing at altitude, which presents its own set of challenges for car and crew. There’s very limited testing and racing at altitude, which presents its own set of challenges for car and crew. Credit: TIM STEVENS
King of the mountain
The current Pikes Peak record is held by an EV, the insane Volkswagen I.D. R Pikes Peak, which made the climb in an astonishing 7:57 back in 2018, with French endurance racing legend Romain Dumas at the wheel. Dumas was back this year with Ford, running an upgraded version of the company’s wild, three-motor, 1,400-horsepower (1,060 kW) Super Mustang Mach-E.
It’s basically the same car that ran an abbreviated, weather-shortened course last year. Zach Burns, Program Engineer for demonstrators at Ford, told me that the team spent the past year optimizing the aerodynamics and suspension of the car as much as possible, working with Dumas in the simulator to optimize things.