The announcement that Seb Loeb will take a break from
his continued domination
of his final WRC season to
drive at Pikes Peak
this year has sparked plenty of interest in America's foremost hillclimb challenge. And now that Peak veteran Monster Tajima has revealed that he’ll be going back to
petrol power
ill-fated dabble
in the EV category, his main rival Rod Millen’s job has been made a little easier.
Millen's old rival Tajima will be petrol-powered
61-year-old New Zealander Millen, whose son Rhys set the course record last year in the Time Attack category, will pilot an updated version of the
Radical
-based Toyota EV P002 in which Fumio Nutahara took the record for an electric vehicle
in
2012
. Some of the updates are under the skin, such as the beefier electric motors and tweaked powertrain; others – we’re looking at the ruddy great spoiler Toyota Motorsport GmbH has planted on the nosecone here – are a tad more obvious.
Those new motors chuck out a total of 544hp and a not-inconsiderable 884lb ft torque, a rather healthy increase over the 476hp and 664lb ft of last year's car. And while those extra aerodynamics will drop top speed from 149mph to 143mph, Toyota’s confident of success, citing the fact that TMG’s ability to adjust the powertrain’s operating parameters from track to track allowed the EV P002 to improve on its 2011 Nurburgring lap record by over 25 seconds in just a year. Were the same sort of margin to be applied to the Pikes Peak course, it could potentially see Millen in the running not just to break Nutahara’s 10min15.38sec electric course record, but potentially to challenge his son’s 9min46.146sec overall record too. If it wasn’t close at the top before, then, it certainly is now!