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Thread: Article: Jeff Denmeade Pikes Peak 2016 T2 EVO 8

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    Article: Jeff Denmeade Pikes Peak 2016 T2 EVO 8

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    Pretty awesome driving and results. Congrats to RRE. I assume Meadsports is out of OZ and RRE basically quarterbacked the whole deal and delivered a turn key car?

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    The car goes back and forth between Oz and the US. We helped him the last time he ran the car at Pikes Peak in 2010. You can see in the video that he clearly has a plan for the entire mountain as the course changes character as it goes up. Then he actually executes the plan. I dont think much anyone could have driven that poor car any faster than he did. Some of you might remember Jeff from MOD 2010 when SCM had the Customer day the next day on Sunday at El Toro. He brought the car to both events and was giving hell rides at the autocross event.

    For Pikes Peak, on the 4 practice days you get to run on one section of the course (not the full run) from day break till 9am. That gives you time for maybe 3-5 runs depending on people breaking down or going off. You wake up at 3am, out of the motel at 3:15 to 3:45 depending on which section you are on that day, up the mountain to your pit area by 4:15 (it takes a lot longer than 11 minutes to go up in a loaded box van) have the car and stuff unloaded and warmed up and driver suited up for to run at 5:00 to 5:15. Practice is done at 9am. Pack up, head back down ( I think I have the down hill overloaded box van smoke pouring out of the wheel well record) then back to the motel and get some "breakfast" even though you have been up for 7 hours. Then on to your routine for getting tires mounted, tweaking the alignment, doing any little cooling tweaks you can, finishing anything you started, maintenance... During this time Jeff would take the pick up truck and go run up and down the mountain with the tourist traffic.

    His wife is his normal rally navigator. So she has the full pace notes. He drives and calls out each of the 152 corners as she checks them against her pace notes to make sure he knows the whole mountain. Then you try to go to sleep early enough to wake up at 3am and do it all over again. For us it was leave the shop Sunday at noon loaded with everything from an entire drivetrain to collision repair tools and drive straight through to get to Colorado Springs for tech inspection Monday. Then practice each day Tuesday the bottom, Wednesday the top, Thursday the bottom (qualifying) and Friday the middle section. Friday is Fan Fest in Colorado Springs where they close down all of downtown and throw a huge street party with all the cars. Saturday is a day off but you have to have your car and service truck in the pit area for the race day by 6pm. Then try to get a little sleep because drivers and crew have to be through the toll gate by 4am so they can start letting spectators in at 5am. At 8am the mountain is closed to all traffic and the race starts at 9am. Motorcycles go up first, then cars.

    It is a weird flow and cycle you get on there. Packing, loading, towing, practice, race, pack, tow back home, unload... it takes about 2 weeks to do it. RRE has run Pikes Peak with a 323 GTX in 1994 and a Celica AllTrac in 1995 with Michael Avatar, An Eclipse GS-T with Kristoff Hustzi in 1996, A WRX with Stephan Verdier in 2004, With Jeff in 2010, Danny George LS Miata in 2014, Jet Black EVO 7 and Roy Narvaez EVO 8 in 2015. I got hooked on Pikes Peak tagging along with Rod Millen's crew in 1991 with his 3 rotor AWD RX7 that I did the body and paint on.

    Mike W

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