In his varied career Rhys Millen has been a drift champion, a rally and rallycross winner, an X-Games competitor and a stunt driver in Hollywood movies; driving the General Lee in 2005's The Dukes of Hazzard movie among his credits.
The event he's synonymous with, though, is the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Millen is one of the go-to men for teams and manufacturers who want to give themselves the best possible chance of success at the famous speed trial high in the Colorado Rockies.
The course packs 156 corners into 12.42 miles as drivers ascend to the mountain's summit. With speeds touching 150mph on the straights, unyielding rock faces and fresh-air drops offer ever-present reminders of how expensive and injurious any error of judgement could be.
Millen's knowledge of the twists and turns - built up over more than a quarter of a century, during which time he's twice set the fastest outright time - has prompted Bentley to sign him to drive its first-ever entry. The Crewe-based manufacturer has its eye on the production SUV course record currently held by luxury rival Range Rover, and needs an experienced competitor to pedal its green Bentayga W12.
Unless you're blessed with a god-like genius like Sébastien Loeb - who rocked up in 2013 in an outrageous 890hp Peugeot 208 T16, shattered Millen's own course record and vowed never to return - it takes several attempts to master Pikes Peak. Established in 1916 by local entrepreneur Spencer Penrose, the hillclimb was held on a dirt toll road until 2002, when progressive paving of the route began. The 2012 running was the first on an all-paved course.
Rather than make the event easier, though, Millen argues that the paved surface is possibly even tougher.
"I consider it scarier, because the speeds are higher," he says. "When Loeb competed there, he said it was the scariest thing he's done in his life. You don't have anyone checking the course and you don't get to do a sighting run, so you're fully committed."
Millen, 45, has lived and breathed the event for a large part of his life. He's from a dyed-in-the-wool motorsport family and his father, Rod, is a prominent rally driver who in the 1990s became hell-bent on trying to set the first sub-ten-minute time up the mountain.
Millen himself has set the fastest time twice and has collected class accolades in a diverse array of vehicles, from a Hyundai Genesis Coupé to a 1520hp battery-powered electric prototype, the eO PP03, in which he established a new record for EVs in 2015. That standard could come under threat from Volkswagen's ID R Pikes Peak challenger this year.
He will be cast in a different role on June 24th, because he won't be fighting for the overall fastest time; rather he'll be focusing on the 12 minute 35.61 second class record established by his friend Paul Dallenbach in a Range Rover Sport in 2015.
Although Bentley and Millen are confident they stand a strong chance of eclipsing the record, it's by no means a foregone conclusion. Plenty can go wrong on the mountain, and competitors only get one shot that counts. Bentley's motorsport boss, Brian Gush, equates the challenge of breaking the record to a Formula 1 driver "trying to set a qualifying time on their out lap".
Millen says he will "leave maybe 10per cent on the table" during practice and qualifying - held on shorter sections of the course - before going all-out on race day.
"Top speeds are not going to be far off other vehicles that have raced up there before, but the mass of the Bentayga is probably double, so adjusting braking points is an area where I can make up a lot of time," he says.
"Another challenge to the event is the chassis balance. You practice very early in the morning when the road temperature is very cold, but race day starts at about 11am, so the balance is entirely different. We'll usually set-up the car to be a little looser for practice, knowing that it should be perfect for race day."
Then there's the effect the increasing altitude and thinner air has on the machinery. Millen explains: "On a normally aspirated engine the rule of thumb is a 3per cent loss in power for every 1000 feet (305 metres) of climb. The start line is at about 10,000 feet (3048 metres) above sea level so you are already around 30per cent down. Then you're going to lose another 14-15 per cent, so you're talking a 45per cent loss at the top."
Even a turbocharged car such as the Bentayga will lose between 5-10per cent as the altitude rises. "That's when displacement is your biggest factor," says Millen. "Credit to the Bentayga: at six litres, it is what you want. It is basically a big air pump."
The altitude also has an effect on the drivers. Millen revealing, "I have a bottle of medical-grade oxygen plumbed into my crash helmet, even for practice days. A few competitors have gone there and had high blood pressure issues, or altitude sickness or fainting or whatever. It's useful as a point of recovery, and to keep yourself calm and focused."
The Bentayga will run in very close to road-going specification, albeit with the addition of some safety kit such as a competition rollcage, a racing seat and a plumbed-in fire extinguisher, and the removal of the extraneous seats and trim. The (refreshingly simple) rulebook permits the fitment of anything from the production car's options list, so Bentley will add carbon-ceramic brakes and other lightweight items.
It will come in at about 300kg lighter than a standard all-wheel-drive Bentayga W12, but under the bonnet, the 610hp, 664lb ft output from the 12-cylinder, twin-turbocharged engine remains unchanged, as will the air suspension and trick 48V active anti-roll system.
To get acquainted with the SUV, Millen has been driving a road-going version around Huntington Beach, California, where his race shop is based. "It only took me leaving my shop to the first traffic light a quarter of a mile down the road to know that we had a winning car," he says. "And relating it to the environment we're going to race it in are all the key factors that it represents as a production vehicle: six litres, twin-turbos, W12, huge torque and power. Pikes Peak is a 'burst speed' style of course, it's not a sustained-speed, F1-style course.
"One of the most impressive things is the gear splits from the eight-speed transmission. The first four gears are stacked very closely. My average speed for the run will be mid-70mph and the maximum speed will be in the region of 125mph, which will be the first five gears, but for most of the run I'll be between second to fourth."
Millen's race crew will run the vehicle on the event in conjunction with Bentley motorsport engineer David Argent, whose day job involves looking after the company's endurance racing programmes with the Continental GT3. The car will shortly leave Bentley's Crewe base for shipment to California. There will be a hot-weather thermal test at Willow Springs Raceway, followed by a pre-event test at Pikes Peak itself in early June.
"The event is going to be a great test for the engineers," says Millen. "The environment is unique. In the past we've seen thermal temperatures on the engine and brakes that are far higher than any other type of competition vehicles."
Bentley is cagey about whether this project is a one-off, as Peugeot's attempt with Loeb was. "It depends how much Rhys leaves on the table!" jokes Gush.
Millen thinks there will be some raised eyebrows as people realise just how potent the modern breed of high-end performance SUVs can be. "Maybe four years ago, an SUV was a compromise. Now you drive this vehicle with its attributes of its handling, braking and performance, there is no compromise. It's a four-seat sports car and it is a category that is growing. You see many other manufacturers making performance SUV models: Lamborghini, for example, and obviously Porsche and BMW. We're going to go there to make a statement and it's a segment of the market that I think will draw more attention."
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