Pikes Peak champion and outright record holder Romain Dumas made it just two corners into his attempt on the hill this weekend before his Ford Lightning Supertruck ground to a halt on course. After getting a good start and rocketing up the hill, the truck simply shut off. After cycling the start procedure a couple of times, the truck was ready to roll again, and zoomed off. The fault cost Dumas at least 26 seconds in the first sector of the mountain, but that didn’t stop him from setting the fastest run of the day to win his fifth PPIHC title.
On Sunday the Lightning Supertruck made it up the hill in eight minutes 53.55 seconds, just ten seconds quicker than the second-placed car. Obviously there was a lot of time left on the table, what with the truck breaking and all, but Dumas did not even manage to beat his 2023 time in the Ford Supervan 4, which ran an eight minute 47.68 second time. Both of his Ford EV efforts fall short of his run in the Volkswagen ID.R, however, which set the outright Pikes Peak record in 2018 with a seven minute 57.14 second run.
Here’s Frenchman Dumas on the truck’s power issue:
“This run was very difficult. I don’t know what happened at the start, just the car switched off completely. It never happened before. I didn’t panic, I just looked at all the numbers, everything was looking OK. I made a power cycle on my own because the main was red. I do two times the power cycle and restart, and suddenly it was working again.”
I, for one, hope Ford improves the Supertruck even further and runs it again in 2025 with Dumas taking another shot at his overall record time. That would be cool.