Motor madman Travis Pastrana has made the fastest ascent yet of the Mt. Washington Auto Road, reaching the summit of New England's tallest peak in a blistering 6 minutes and 20.47 seconds.
The four-time Rally America national champion averaged nearly 72 mph on the 7.2-mile road at the wheel of his Subaru WRX STi rally car. Pastrana shaved more than 20 seconds off the record set by Frank Sprongl in 1998. He had the course to himself, the lucky SOB, because Mt. Washington Auto Road officials were testing road conditions ahead of next spring's return of the Mt. Washington Hillclimb Auto Race, aka the Climb to the Clouds.
"This is an amazing road. It's just so much fun," Pastrana said. "It's extremely challenging, there is no room for error and the scenery is epic. The Mount Washington Auto Road has some amazing history to it."
Indeed.
Mt. Washington Auto Road is, like the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, among the toughest challenges in motorsports. Drivers negotiate a tarmac and gravel road lined with trees and rocks as they climb 4,618 feet to the summit at 6,288 feet. We've driven this road, and the average grade is 11.6 percent with some steep drops along some stretches that include about a mile of dirt.
The road was finished in 1861. It hosted the inaugural Climb to the Clouds race in 1904 – seven years before the first Indianapolis 500 and 12 years before the first Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Harry Harkness won the inaugural running in a Mercedes with a time of 24 minutes and 37 seconds.
The race ran sporadically through 1961, then came back in the 1990s. The last race was run in 2001 and cut short due to extreme weather. It isn't unusual for things to get ugly quickly on Mount Washington, and the summit is routinely battered by the wind. In fact, the highest wind speed ever recorded in the United States – 231 mph – was recorded at the summit in 1934.
Things weren't nearly so crazy when Pastrana and navigator Marshall Clarke made their runs on Wednesday. But the visibility quickly dwindled to almost nothing at the summit after his first run, so the three subsequent sprints to the peak were slower than the first.
"Travis' run was incredibly thrilling on a number of fronts," Howie Wemyss, general manager of the Mt. Washington Auto Road, said in a statement. "It's amazing that he was able to drive that car to the summit in 6:20, and all the more so when you realize that he and his co-driver had just seen the Auto Road for the first time the day before and the top quarter mile was in thick fog.
The Climb to the Clouds makes it return June 22-26 as part of the 150th anniversary celebration of the Mt. Washington Auto Road.
Photos: Brian Nevins / Red Bull
See Also:
- Video: Climb Pikes Peak With The Monster
- Video: Red Bull Races to the Clouds
- Audi's Robotic Car Drives Better Than You Do
- Video: Racing Flat-Out to the Clouds
Footage of Frank Sprongl's run in 1998 in an Audi S2. Video: y2kquick2 / YouTube
Pastrana, on his way to a record-setting time of 6 minutes and 20.47 seconds.
Cars tend to handle better with all four tires on the ground.
Not every run went so well as the first.
