It’s three in the morning in the largely empty lobby of a rather environmentally conscious hotel. The only people there to greet me from the room’s leather couches are a handful of older white guys I’d be spending the weekend with and a security guard at the front desk with the big iron on his hip. “I put on a pot of coffee for y’all,” says the combination armed guard/desk receptionist.
“Thank you,” we reply, before loading our thousands of dollars worth of gear into two brand spanking new Hyundai Santa Fe’s. We hit the road to make our way to the almighty, seemingly unconquerable, Pikes Peak.
[Full Disclosure: Hyundai invited us to Pike’s Peak this year, where the Ioniq 5 N was out strutting its stuff. We sent Griffin, a young, energetic, and just cool guy who used to live in my Studio City apartment building, and whom I bonded with over his lifted Jeep TJ and stickshift Mazda 3 daily driver (which he’s now changed to a C6 ‘Vette). Turns out: He works in the film industry and is a great shooter, and he loves cars. Apparently Hyundai took him on some rapids? I’m worried he now thinks our grueling industry is just some shrimp-eating boondoggle. From Griffin: “Thank you for taking me along the ride, Hyundai, and thank you for forcing me to get onto a raft in nearly class five rapids and hoping I didn’t drown. It was a blast.” We work hard, Griffin! Hard, I tell you! Anyway, back to Griffin. -DT].
As soon as we reached the mountain, we were greeted by several mile long lines and abysmal weather with visibility so poor that the surrounding cars disappear into the fog that flanks us.
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Our car has Becky Evans of Top Gear fame, her videographer Patrick Whelan, Chris Rosales from Motor1 and Motorsports.com, and myself: the youngster who was told the first press trip of his career would be with Hyundai covering a race where a popped tire or snapped suspension arm or even something smaller could send a driver off a mountain, potentially to their death. This was was not going to be a cushy Porsche Cayenne press drive in the South of France, but I, a photographer, kinda of liked that.
The one thing we all have in common though? We’re damn tired, struggling for breath atop Devil’s Playground’s 13,000 feet, and we’re waiting for conditions to maybe change while watching a documentary about a professional English fraudster who allegedly impersonates footballers and robs his girlfriends for all they’ve got. It’s good vibes up here.
Here’s the thing I quickly learned that Friday morning: three layers was absolutely not enough to stay warm, but hugging a stack of tire warmers on full blast? Surprisingly effective!
The cars and the ones who drive them
Hyundai brought two variations of the IONIQ 5 N: the base production model whose extra seats had been removed and which had a cage added, and the TA Spec, which is a full time attack build with 37 extra horses at the rear and an insane aero kit to boot.
“Pikes peak is becoming a proving ground for electric technology,” said Ron Zaras, the pilot of the production-model SUV/hatchback. “There’s no other place I can think of where you see the huge disadvantage of (internal combustion engines).”
Zaras, best known for his work with Hoonigan and the late Ken Block, has only just started his professional racing career and felt like he was thrown in the deep end almost immediately.
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The beauty of the the electric powertrain for drivers like Zaras is that they offer access to power all the time, simply because they aren’t reliant on the increasingly thinning air as they approach the 14,115 foot summit. And just as important is the speed with which that power can be accessed; it’s instant.
“It’s so nice to have that power right off the bat,” he said about the over 600 horsepower machine he’s carving up the mountain. He added that most of their time comes from the middle sector filled with slow hairpins that immediately open to long straights that they can only just get on the power for.
“This kinda feels like a video game,” he said, the irony being that most of his time getting to know the track was through simulator time on the game Asetto Corsa.
Hyundai’s three-car entry (it was initially four until Paul Dallenbach suffered a crash that broke his leg and pulled the car out of competition) marks the Korean brand’s first year back on the mountain since 2013. What’s even crazier is that the decision to race the car was one only made last December.
“Koreans are so quick,” said Till Wartenberg, Vice President of N Brand & Motorsport at Hyundai. “Bali, bali,” he said while referring to the decisive Korean ethos that loosely translates to “fast, fast,” or “hurry, hurry.”
The thing is: Hyundai never even cared about racing an EV, specifically. Wartenberg, whose last name aptly translates “waiting for the mountain,” said all they wanted to do was race a production car that you could buy in stores the next day. It just so happened that car was an EV.
And from where I was standing: it looked like a pretty damn good machine.
Let’s go racing.
It’s Sunday morning, and we’ve got three cars itching to dump their batteries’ full power through their wheels to eat that early morning pavement.
The four car exhibition class that Hyundai was competing in ran first in the morning, with SCCA hall-of-famer and fellow journalist Randy “RFP” Pobst starting first in the #49 TA Spec.
RFP’s 2024 go at Pikes Peak was a strange one. He was a last minute replacement for four time “King of the Mountain” Robin Shute, and Pobst found himself victim to a mechanical failure during Friday’s quali session that resulted in him not setting a time.
In other words: that means Pobst had to run at the mountain in a car he really didn’t know and on a track he hadn’t raced in years. A true recipe for success, right?
Honestly, yeah, kind of a success. Pobst piloted the #49 to a time of 9:55.551, which landed him at a shockingly high (all things considered) eighth place overall. Solid start to the day, right?
Next up for the Korean outfit: Ron Zaras in the production model.
The mountain rookie surely terrified his wife, Lara, who joked on Friday that she needs “my own oxygen tank for when he takes off.”
But she also acknowledged that Ron understands his limits when he’s on the track, and she’s clearly right on that end. Zaras piloted his production spec car to a time of 10:49.267 which landed him in 26th place. Zaras’ closest competitor in class was a road based Rivian R1T with 1,025 horsepower that clocked a time of 10:53.883. If you’re keeping score, that means Zaras, who only started racing in the last couple of months, finished in the top half of the 60 total entries and finished ahead of a car with nearly 400 extra horses on tap. Still, the Rivian was clearly much heavier and larger, and it was cool seeing it racing out there.
Lastly for Hyundai we have Dani Sordo, whom you may know as a WRC driver — largely considered to be one of the best drivers to touch the pavement. With three rally wins to his name and 229 stage wins, you know that this car and driver pairing was meant to do great things, and you’d think right.
Sordo pulled the TA Spec Ioniq 5 N the whole way up the mountain to a blistering 9:30.852, landing the Spaniard in third place overall, only behind Christian Merli in a 2024 Wolf Aurobay GB08 2.0 HP and Romain Dumas in the absolutely unhinged Ford SuperTruck that boasts a whopping 1,600 horsepower and set a time of 8:53.553. (You can see the supertruck in the image below).
The TA Spec that Sordo and Pobst were driving? Just shy of 680 horsepower. Forty seconds slower in a car with less than half of the SuperTruck’s power isn’t anything to be ashamed of if you ask me. (It’s worth nothing that the SuperTruck had an issue that resulted in full power loss that took almost 30 seconds to restart).
Takeaways
Based on what I saw, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N seems like a hell of a car, and their results and all the circumstances around it seem to prove that. [Ed Note: Plus, anyone who’s driven the production model seems to love it, so it all tracks (pun intended). -DT]
Whether it’s pulling up just a few seconds shy of the unhinged, Frankensteined creation that is Ford’s SuperTruck or rookies going toe to toe against folks who have been doing this for years in cars with more power, Hyundai showed that the IONIQ 5 N and its TA Spec variant are here to make a name for themselves.
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And from what it sounds like, they aren’t done yet. “Yes, we will come back to Pikes Peak,” said Wartenberg. “Definitely.” Wartenberg feels that Korea is trendy right now, and it’s hard to argue otherwise considering the meteoric rise of K-pop and the catapulting of Korean filmmaking into the American zeitgeist via shows like Squid Games or movies like “Parasite.” With that in mind, Wartenberg feels like it’s their time to shine.
As for Zaras’ post-race plans? “First thing: I’m going to Denver Biscuit Company, getting a Bloody Mary, and probably some kind of fried chicken.” I hope you got that meal, Ron. You definitely earned it.
Overall results from the 2024 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb can be found here, and full stats and more details about the IONIQ 5 TA Spec can be found here.
[Ed Note: I’ll reiterate: We work hard, Griffin! -DT].
Great story! Look forward to more from you! And missed that you had a lifted TJ in discussion this morning else we would have been talking that vs cameras…or both!
I love the hill climb race as a genre of racing. Crew, car and driver versus clock. I mean yes, there are competitors, but not direct. But fundamentally it’s about your team’s preparation and ability.
These are some amazing photos!
Great write-up and beautiful photography! I really need to make it to that event someday.
Damn…that Supertruck time is insane…the front end looks sorta like the classic Squarebody truck grille area! Way too bad it’s a Ford…it would be awesome as a Chevy w/ a real engine=gas…so sad…SO SO SO SO SAD!
Fabulous photos and really fun writing! Great piece on an event I’d love to attend myself.
Great writing and even better photography!
Yes, going up in elevation is where electric powertrains shine.
Rafting here is LEGIT.
That first image! Damn!
As soon as the word photographer was mentioned my expectations went up, but not that far haha.
Amazing
I liked this a lot – would love to see and read much more from ya!
The SuperTruck and SuperVan are my unashamed, loud n proud most favorite vehicles. They’re just so bonkers in all the best ways.
Great article, pics and prose. Thanks!
Before I scrolled down, I figured this Griffin character was just another fellow with a lot of camera equipment or a new iPhone. Anyone can take a photo these days, right? But then I scrolled.
This fellow can shoot! If he isn’t shooting for Tarantino or Spielberg, you ought to hire him before he is.
This was really well written, with facts, metaphor, and color, all entertainingly mixed.
It gotta be weird seeing all the electric race cars in the drivers parade and there is no deafening roar of the engines.
Welcome, Griffin!
So before you migrated to Santa Monica and the home of Elise (not her real name), you were in Studio City? I know neighborhood boundaries are pretty malleable, but I still assume this wasn’t Sherman Oaks adjacent, with the adjacency extended up Sepulveda to the, um, “hospitality cluster” of hotels serving the, um, “tourist trade.” Which is a safe bet, because I doubt even they would let you park anything in your pre-i3 fleet on site.
Thanks Griffin! Great stuff here! I have run this road many times. And wished to win the lottery so I could actually put a car and support team together. But no luck yet.
Grew up at nearly that elevation, and can agree that breathing is hard for you flat- lander folks. Best to give yourself a day or two to get used to it, before working too hard at having fun.
Take care, and hope to see more from you soon.
Awesome pictures. Makes me want to go see it for myself. Just one thing, why call out the dudes you went with as “Old white guys” ? Seems weird and a little sus.
OK with that. We are old white guys, and there ain’t a PC term for us?
Boomer is OK, but it’s usually used in an insulating way…YMMV
yeah you should avoid comments like that, esp as a first impression. makes you sound kind of superficial, which I’m sure isn’t true.
Eh, as an old(er) white guy, I’m ok with it. It sets the scene as his being with a group of “trad” auto journalist types.
Agreed. You and I (middle-aged white guy) would feel a little out of place with a crowd of mostly early-20s black guys, and that’s fine. Doesn’t mean we can’t all get along and have a good time, just sometimes one finds themselves outside their comfort zone.
I’m a old white boomer and don’t resent the terms in any way. I referred to our coop students the other day as ‘the kids’. Someone called me out on it. I felt a tiny little bit bad; naw, they’re kids, smart, eager, enthusiastic kids.
Can’t say that even registered for me. At almost any car event around here, it’s full of “old white guys”. That’s not a statement, it’s just facts. I was not surprised that this carries over to other parts of the country. As a (nearly) middle-aged white guy, doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
As for calling people boys or kids, nothing wrong with that as long as you’re not looking to denigrate on purpose.
I call my friends boys and kids (even in mixed gender and age) all the time.
My opinion FWIW, i’d be totally fine being called that.
That said, my favorite sense of humor is clever insults (including ones directed at me) so i may be less sensitive than most
Wow…gotta say, wasn’t expecting THAT plot twist at the end. I guess that’s one way to read the community’s support for a new author’s fantastic work and push back against the OP’s underlying implications without turning the comment section into a flaming dumpster fire. A completely unsubstantiated and unnecessarily vitriolic read that undermines the first part of your comment, but a read nonetheless.
settle down beavis.
Wow. Well, I wasn’t expecting all this, but I guess I should have. The comment just struck me as odd. Nothing less, nothing more. should have just shrugged and moved on. Your assumptions about who I must be are pretty funny from my side – my Husband is still laughing.
Nicely down. Informative and unbiased. Maybe David should have him review the Fisker?
Or the Cybertruck /s
Nice to have you here Griffin! And the rafting pics are perfect.
For many years, Randy Pobst was really the only reason I read the SCCA magazine. He’s such rare stuff – a serious racer who’s also a serious writer, but with good fun in each.
A unique event and well worth the trip. Thamks for the article
Coming out of the gate hot with some of the most fun writing I’ve seen here, and I really like the way the blur works on that Rivian shot.
That Rivian looks amazing in Griffin’s shot. They should offer that as a Pikes Peak Appearance Package. That is spectacular.
I would like to know more about the second place car, as it seems to be mentioned on Wolf’s website, but hasn’t been updated to the current cars. 410 HP in a light open wheeler sounds fun, but also potentially very expensive.
Appears it was light and turboed enough to overcome the altitude.
That F150 probably has less in common with a standard F150 Lightning than a Toyota Corolla has with a Mercedes Unimog.
In the parade picture, you can see that the “F150” it is lowered until it is the same height as the Hyundai! With a covered, aerodynamic bed-area, giant spoiler, etc. What exactly does this vehicle have to do with a real F150?
Same as if VW called the 2018 record-holder I.D. R a “Passat” 🙂
Just like the Suzuki Escudo was stock, right?
I double-dog dare you to walk into your nearest Ford dealership and tell them you want to order the F-150 in SuperTruck trim.
If they offer to sell one to you at cost, RUN AWAY!
Blimey, next you’ll be saying that because most Transit vans didn’t come with a GT40 chassis and engine, the 1971 Supervan was just a publicity stunt!