Higher Power Racers have tackled Pikes Peak since 1916. This year, a veteran attempts a record in a 800-horsepower Ford Fiesta.

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TURN, TURN, TURN Grönholm negotiates one of the course’s many switchbacks.

Higher Power

With 156 blind turns and dizzying drops, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is one of racing’s toughest challenges. Superstar driver Marcus Grönholm aims to set a new course record—on his very fi rst try. // BY KELLY BASTONE

MARCUS GRÖNHOLM doesn’t look nervous, but he probably should be. The gravel road beyond his steering wheel disappears into the clouds, so he can’t see the next hairpin turn or the sheer 2,000-foot drop just beyond. And though he’s a veteran racer, a two-time World Rally Champion and one of the best wheelmen in the world, he’s a rookie at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Yesterday’s practice run up through 156 precarious corners was his fi rst time on the course and nearly his last: As he was speeding into a turn, the hood of his turbocharged, 800-horsepower Ford Fiesta came unlatched and fl ipped up onto the windshield, obscuring everything except the milky Colorado fog in the side window.

So today, less than 24 hours before the race, Grönholm pilots a Ford Flex SUV slowly up Pikes Peak’s steep, snarled curves for a fi nal “walk-through” of the course. He motors past wind-raked high-country grasses and boulder fi elds. Meanwhile, in the passenger seat, codriver Timo Alanne recites the features of each of the road’s twists, switchbacks and straightaways, like a tutor drilling a student for a physics fi nal.

Any student would be anxious about this test, where the penalty for braking a split second too late is a long swan dive