Dai looks pretty happy at the top. Pikes is a mean race, making it to the summit is always a relief.
Dai taking a pic with Rhys Millen and his dad, the legendary Rod Millen who was just a few hundredths of a second faster and had come in third in Unlimited Class. Rod had brought out his 1998-1999 winning Toyota Tacoma for the historical 100th running of the race. This amazing vehicle is more of a Prototype than a truck and it was great to see it out for the event. Rhys had just won the Pikes Peak Open class.
Dai had placed seventh overall, 2nd in class, and achieved the Evasive Team’s goal of being the fastest electric car up the mountain! It was a very close contest, Randy Pobst in the Unplugged Performance Plaid was going really fast, he was faster than Dai in the first 3 segments by about 17 seconds. We knew we had quite an advantage in the rough upper part of the course but we didn’t think Dai could make up that sort of gap. However, the mountain can be fickle and Randy was met with worsening fog even though he was literally the next car behind Dai. The coldness also caused Randy to be distracted by some window fogging, this allowed Dai’s faster upper segment time to give him the lead!
The Evasive Motorsports Team and the sponsors were happy with this result and a point was proven. 2022 was a great redemption from the disaster that was 2021. Like it or not electric power is coming and coming fast, you better get familiar with it or get left behind! We will continue to be with Team Evasive as long as this program is going and into the future. We have probably reached the maximum potential of the Model 3 platform. We are getting quite a bit out of the handling and brakes and we are being hurt by the lack of power. Who knows what the future will hold.
Souces
Evasive Motorsports
Turn 14 Distribution
Yokohama Tires
Eneos USA
KW Suspension
CSF Cooling
4 comments
Very cool! Congrats to Dai and the team! BEV has come a long way, and this format is perfect for the current state of battery tech. Exciting times!
Thank you!
Mike, these Pikes Peak race support stories are the best. When you talk about this car reaching the damping limits of conventional shocks, what are you options when that happens?
since we were using the stiffest commercially available springs, fortunately this was not an issue. If we had to somehow go stiffer, I would have to find another manufacturer and possibly do something like off-road shocks that have bigger pistons and more fluid flow.