Ford F-150 Lightning SuperTruck Claims Pikes Peak Title
Ford’s cyborg-meets-F1 F-150 Lightning SuperTruck took home the top honor at this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb event in Colorado. The bewinged electric pickup notched an 8:53.533 time to race up the mountain, the fastest among all 61 competitors.
Things got off to a great start for Ford’s electric speedster a few days earlier, when driver Romain Dumas set a new open-class qualifying record, which saw entrants run the lower section of the hillclimb. His 3:32.831 elapsed time was more than seven seconds faster than the previous record, set by the Ford Performance SuperVan 4.2 (also electric) the previous year.
Interestingly, the truck’s time during the race itself could have been even better were it not for an issue that arose during the attempt. Dumas encountered a technical ailment during his run that saw the truck come to a complete stop during its pass. After a complete reset, Dumas charged on in the 1600-hp truck. Ford reckons the ailment added 26 seconds to the run time.
Had that not happened, Dumas may be looking at an even better time than the 8:47.682 that the SuperVan 4.2 posted last year. The times of both the SuperTruck and the SuperVan 4.2 still fall well short of the overall record at Pikes Peak (7:57.148), which the Volkswagen ID.R electric hypercar set back in 2018. That car’s driver? You guessed it, Romain Dumas.
“The progression of Ford electric vehicles taking on and completing the toughest challenges is a major testament to the hard work and dedication our teams have put into the program,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director, Ford Performance Motorsports. “We learned a great deal from SuperVan 4.2 in last year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and were able to apply that knowledge to this year’s run. It’s onward and upward from here.”
It might seem a stretch to call this machine a truck, but such is the nature of the open class at Pike’s Peak—if there’s a venue and a home in a rulebook for the wildest aero and drivetrain innovations, this is it. Viewed another way, it is mighty impressive to see what sort of engineering modifications can—and must—be done to turn this form factor into something that can storm up Pikes Peak and win.
Up near the top, where the air gets thinner, these electric vehicles have a massive advantage. They don’t need to mix the thin air with fuel to produce combustion: While traditional gas-powered cars lose power as they climb, the F-150 Lightning SuperTruck puts the same brutal power down out of every corner, no matter the elevation.
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Win on Sunday, sell on Monday? This is the same awareness building strategy that’s been in place for years to sell cars. Not this truck, of course, but it will promote the growing acceptance of electric vehicles among new vehicle buyers. Well done, Ford and Romain Dumas!
All that money spent and they can’t keep it running for 10 minutes. That is with how many support people on hand? If you took it to the dealership they would tell you they couldn’t replicate the problem.
“Win on Sunday, sell on Monday?” … not for drivers on snow covered Northern U.S. winter roads!
One of the things that makes the Pikes Peak Hill Climb so competitive is as the altitude increases, horsepower declines forcing teams to learn to minimize this loss. The more successful in overcoming this loss, the more competitive the team is. EVs don’t have to contend with this so of course their times are better than ICE vehicles so it’s all about the driver and not so much the vehicle. This is like the proverbial comparing apples to oranges. To the driver, good job but so what, your slot car is fast and die hards like me don’t care.
It’s a neat achievement to watch but it is not going to make me go to a dealer and buy something as this thing has not relation to a factory offering.
Ford needs to tell us what happened that made the truck come to a complete stop. Was it a software problem, driver/crew error? Or an unknown glitch from whatever modifications made for this truck over a passenger vehicle. For me, it is apples to oranges, let these vehicles race against each other in an Electric class, and not in “unlimited” But pikes Peak has always done things like this to promote a certain driver or class. If they can’t win, just create a class and voila, they are champions!! I quit going there when it went to all asphalt and the running of the event is a joke!!
That’s all fine and good but did he have enough battery to come back down the hill or did he just coast.
If he coasted all the way down, would the battery be charged up for another run? 🙂