The Fastest Subarus ever on Pikes Peak

Now that the 2024 Pikes Peak Hill Climb is in the books, we were inspired to look back at the other Subaru's that have run this event in the past to find the fastest results.

The fastest WRX STI to ever run up Pikes Peak is the CanJam STI driven by Richard Boake with a time of 10:36.99 in the 2016 Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

We did run that same year, and initially this car was in our class, Time Attack 1, but the aero on the car bumped it into the Unlimited class.  This same car won the Speed Ring in 2017, defeating the Lyfe Motorsport GTR to put down the fastest time at that event to give you an idea of how quick this car is.

Here is a link to their record run:

Our time in the 2024 Pikes Peak Hill Climb of 10:46.133 makes the Flatirons Tuning WRX driven by Scott Crouch the second fastest WRX/STI to climb Pikes Peak, and the fastest Time Attack 1 Subaru.  It has taken many years of work and development to get the car to the point where we could put down this time.  We had to put in a lot of work this year to get this result, swapping in a new engine Thursday to practice again on Friday morning, and make the race run that we did.

A huge thanks goes out to the Flatirons Tuning crew, Boost'd Scoops crew, Jeremy Agostino for going above and beyond, Roger Clark Motorsport for all of their help and support, and Flatirons Subaru.

And all of you that follow, support, and inspire us to keep pushing and developing the car to continue to go faster.

Here is our 2024 Pikes Peak run if you haven't seen it yet:

The third fastest WRX STI, and the car and driver that we have been chasing for a long time is Jeremiah Fox.  He ran the race in 2015 for the first and only time and put down a time of 10:47.585 that we have been chasing ever since.  

The car was actually very similar to ours as I recall, but had a much more developed suspension and brake package at the time.  It was a fantastic run to be sure and at the time, we weren't sure what it would take for us to find that much time on the mountain.

Here is a link to Jeremiah Fox's 2015 Pikes Peak run:

There are two other cars that I am going to include here, and they are actually faster than the three mentioned so far.  I'm going to call them Subaru's but they don't come up as such because they are Scion FR-S's.  And it turns out they both ran in the same year.

The fastest Subaru every to run up Pikes Peak in my opinion was Ken Gushi  in 2014.  He was driving the Greddy Scion FR-S which was a very well sorted car, and was making plenty of power with a Greddy Supercharged FA20 engine.

His time of 10:30.188 is what I would consider the fastest time a Subaru has ever put down on Pikes Peak, and this is our overall target that we want to beat some day.

Here is a link to Greddy's Blog about the run

And here is a link that Scion put out about his run as well:

That same year, Toshiki Yoshioka was running a Tomei sponsored Scion FR-S, and he finished right behind Gushi with a time of 10:34.564.  His Scion was running a Tomei Ej 2.6 liter stroker engine, so his time is technically the fastest Subaru EJ engine ever to have run up Pikes Peak.

It was a privilege to watch these two similar cars battle all week, and it is a credit to both teams that they finished as close as they did.

Here is a link to Yoshioka's race run from 2014:

In compiling this list, we went back through the Pikes Peak records to find all of the Subaru's that have competed, and by our count there are over 50 drives have run up Pikes Peak in a Subaru, and here is that list:

All of these times were set on the fully paved course, but if you look back to the times set before 2012 when the road was fully paved, there are a lot of times that are quite quick as well.

Here is a link to the Pikes Peak Historical Results so you can go back and look at all of the results from the different era's.

Enthusiasts have been racing Subaru's on Pikes Peak from the days when it was fully dirt up to present, and we hope that there will always be a Subaru entered in the Race to the Clouds for years to come.  We will do our best to keep coming back year after year, and to continue finding time.  And we hope that other Subaru drivers will be inspired to run and challenge these records as long as there is a Pikes Peak Hill Climb.

Stay Tuned, and Keep Climbing.

- Jon Cooley