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| Monster Away! The car is so fast and launched so hard that even with our camera firing away at 5 frames per second, this is about the only good action shot of the car we got, if you can call this good. |
Tajima San’s illustrious career includes nine All Japan Dirt Trial Championship titles, the 2004 Junior WRC championship and seven Pikes Peak overall victories. Although he retired from Rally, Tajima San has continued to compete in International Hillclimbing.
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| The cramped cockpit has a Motec digital dash, and switches controlling the fuel pump, various cooling pumps, water sprayers and fans. Multi mode switches which we presume have something to do with engine map selection including boost and diff control strategy are here as well. The sequential shifter is on the left and O2 system for the driver on the right. The blue knob adjusts the brake bias. |
On July 21, 2007, Tajima San beat Rod Millen’s long standing, thirteen year old Pikes Peak record, becoming the new King of the Hill, with a time of 10:01.408, the current record which still stands. In all Tajima San has won the Pikes Peak hillclimb an amazing 14 times, in 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Tajima san is the undisputed King of the Mountain.
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| Last second adjustments. |
When attending the 2010 running of the Pikes Peak hillclimb, we were lucky enough to be able to take a close look at the latest in the long line of Suzuki Sport Hillclimb specials, the Monster Sport Suzuki SX4. Unfortunately, we don’t know the team well and we did not have special access to the car as we did with Rhys Millen’s PM580. Our photography was hampered by poor lighting and the cramped Pikes Peak hillside pit which was also crowded with fans. In typical Japanese fashion the team is also pretty secretive of the technology of the car and there was the language barrier so we didn’t get to ask many questions. So what you see is what we were able to glean from just looking at stuff on the car and spares around the pits.
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| Somewhere in there is a Suzuki SUV. Looks more like a big LMP car instead! |
