Hyundai Is Frickin' Serious About Winning Pikes Peak

Hyundai announced on March 1 that it would be tackling the 102nd running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb this June with a massive four-car effort. The Korean automaker is bringing a quartet of Ioniq 5 N racers to the hill, and judging by the drivers it has selected for its team, it is looking to break the outright record on the mountain. It’s been six years since Volkswagen took a new record run with its I.D. R electric prototype, and it’s about damn time someone stepped up to the plate to try to get the king of the hill title back.

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

This new Pikes Peak effort will see four H-badged EVs on the hill, built by American team Bryan Herta Autosport, which has pushed Hyundai N to five consecutive Michelin Pilot Challenge championships. The cars will be driven by four-time-and-current hillclimb champ Robin Shute, eleven-time event winner Paul Dallenbach, and Hyundai N WRC factory ace Dani Sordo, plus another as-yet-unannounced driver. This is about as serious a lineup as the brand could bring to Pikes Peak, and barring any serious issues, will almost certainly see one of them victorious.

It’s been a while since Hyundai got serious about racing at Pikes Peak. In the 2000s, Hyundai developed a partnership with Rhys Millen Racing. Together they developed a Hyundai Genesis which took the Time Attack 2 title in 2009, finished third overall with a dedicated prototype RMR JE09 (pictured above), and set a new record for the fully-paved course in 2012, again in a Genesis Coupe time attack car. The last time Hyundai tried for the overall win at PPIHC was 2013, when it again built a dedicated prototype, the PM580T (below), and narrowly lost out to Sébastien Loeb’s monster record-breaking Peugeot run.

Image: Hyundai

“The driver is one of the most critical elements to being successful at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb,” said Till Wartenberg, Hyundai vice president and head of N Brand and Motorsport. “We have selected top experts like Robin Shute and Paul Dallenbach who have won the event overall and in class 15 times. Both these drivers have an incredible track record and know the climb well. The addition of Hyundai Motorsports WRC driver Dani Sordo is very exciting and will help us engage a global audience for the hill climb.”

Volkswagen got lots of great PR from running its racer at the PPIHC, then following it up with an electric ‘Ring record, the record at Goodwood hillclimb, and setting a time up Tianmen Mountain. The car was retired in 2020, and there hasn’t been any push from the German brand to get any electric performance models out to the public on the back of this effort. What was the point? There’s no electric Golf R or even GTI.

Unlike Volkswagen, Hyundai’s N division has recently shifted its focus to building electric performance machines with its new Ioniq 5 N. Boss of that performance arm, Albert Biermann, recently confirmed that he’s interested in finding a way to lower the price of performance EVs. It makes total sense that Hyundai and N want to inextricably link themselves to electric performance. One way to do that would be to show up at Pikes Peak and absolutely smash Volkswagen’s 7:57.148 record.

All four Hyundais will be entered in the “Exhibition” class, meaning they won’t need to meet any specific ruleset from the sanctioning body. Two of the cars (those entered for Dallenbach and TBA) are listed as simply “Ioniq 5 N” but the two for Sordo and Shute are on the entry list as “Ioniq 5 N Pikes Peak Special.”

The Volkswagen I.D. R made do with just 671 horsepower, pushing the 2,500 pound car. A stock Ioniq 5 N nearly matches the VW prototype on power, though is comparatively hefty at 4,650 pounds. If the N division can turn the EV into a proper race car with plenty of aerodynamic downforce and lots of weight loss, it could be a serious contender for the overall record. Especially with two of them in attendance driven by some incredible talent.