The Flatirons Tuning Rally Team returned to the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb for the second time in 2013. For our second trip to the race we did make some modifications to our Subaru WRX Rally car, including putting on a new Blouch turbo and a tune that gave us roughly 100 hp more than we had last year. We knew that we would in no way be competing with the likes of Sebastian Loeb or Rhys Millen, but we were hoping for a solid showing in the Time Attack class.

Our driver, Scott Crouch, was happy with the car throughout practice, and the car was getting consistently faster as we continued to refine our set-up. On race day, as we were sitting a few cars from the start line, word came down that there was some rain on the course. We had been practicing all week on slicks, and if we would have hit rain, would have been dangerous, and would have definitely slowed down our run considerably. The last minute call was made to start on rain tires (as we did last year) and that is how we ran.

Overall we are very happy with our result this year in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. We took roughly a minute off of our time last year and finished solidly in the middle of our class. As you can see from the video, there was definitely some rain in the middle and top sections of the road. Our goal for 2014 is to return to the race, and hopefully be able to get a full dry run in to see what time we can set if we have good conditions.