PH Gets A 'Pikes Peak Shakedown'

Take one Porsche GT3 Cup, some Jeff Zwart spice, and throw in a journalist...

By Kyle Fortune / Thursday, 2 December 2010 / Loading comments

I'm strapped in tightly to a GT3 Cup Car. Its 3.6-litre 430bhp, flat-six engine is creating an absolute racket behind me and Jeff Zwart clunks the shifter into first and pulls away. The friendly banter has stopped, not least because of the noise, but because Jeff has a job to do.

There's 2.56 miles of rutted bumpy gravel ahead of us. It climbs up a vertical height of 2,670ft in Los Coyotes Reservation. Not Pikes Peak then, but a post-event sampler for media hacks, a bite-sized chance to see Jeff wring the hell out of his GT3 Cup car. You might have seen his two-wheel drive class-winning run up America's Mountain, but if not take a look here.

We're in the same car, though it's down 30bhp or so thanks to a 3.6-litre rather than the Pikes Peak 3.8-litre unit in the back. It's quick enough though, even on what Jeff's described as 'the wrong tyres'. Seems he's doing just fine to me, the GT3 Cup scrabbling its way up the bumpy, rutted road before coming to a halt.

It's all over too quickly, a donut turn up top has us round and we head down the hill. My head aches, as it's been pounded (in a helmet, thankfully) against the rollbar on every bump and turn, and the car's interior is full of dust. It only lasted a few minutes, but it was about as intense a few minutes as you can imagine - ably illustrated by Porsche's official event video below...