Millen sets new Pikes Peak course record

Veteran Pikes Peak International Hill Climb star Rhys Millen needed only a few minutes to erase the new course record at Pikes Peak, leading off the Time Attack division with a blistering 9 minutes 46.164 seconds to wipe out the just attained new mark of 9:46.181 set by Romain Dumas of France in the Pikes Peak Open division.
 
Millen drove his 2013 Hyundai Genesis Coupe to the summit finish line with perhaps the best race in the history of America’s second oldest motor sports race behind the Indy 500, and added another chapter in the famed history of the Millen family at Pikes Peak.

Romain Dumas of France, the 2010 winner of the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans had earlier broken the course record, piloting his 2012 Porsche GR3R to new mark of 9:46.181 as the leadoff driver in the 10-driver Pikes Peak Open division. The old mark was 9:51.278 set by Japan’s Nobuhiro Tajima in 2011, racing in the Unlimited division.

Tajima, running in the Electric Auto Division after six straight Unlimited titles, was forced out of the running by a fire in the cockpit of his electric entry as he began the first leg. 

Snow flurries, rain and slick pavement then forced officials to move the finish line from the summit of 14,100-foot Pikes Peak down to Glen Cove, where the altitude is 11,440 feet.
 
The current temperature at the summit of Pikes Peak is 38 degrees.
 
The remaining races (the remainder of Time Attack, Super Stock and Open Wheel, will finish on the shortened course. It’s only the third time in the history of the race, which began in 1916, that the course had to be shortened, each by weather issues.

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