Determined to improve on that showing, Shute and some friends set out to build their own car to take on the mountain. That car, which they put together in a family garage, ended up being a Wolf GB08 chassis powered by a two-liter turbo HPD Honda Racing engine, an engine Shute says they acquired from four-time Pikes Peak winner Dumas.
“Originally it was a sports racer, very similar to a Norma,” Shute said. “We did our own install for the turbo and intercooler and what not, then we also did our own aerodynamics for the car. We sort of pulled off the fenders so we were able to put bigger tires on the car and we were able to reduce weight. We made wings for the car that also created more downforce.
“The car is just located in a home garage, there are no fancy shops or anything like that.”
He returned to Pikes Peak last year with his new car, dubbed the Wolf TSC-Honda. However, poor weather conditions prevented him from making a full run up the mountain and the car never got the chance to reach its potential.
Bad weather was again a factor this year, but this time Shute got ahead of the weather. He completed his run of 9 minutes and 12.476 seconds up the 12.42-mile, 156-turn course before Mother Nature intervened and shortened the course for roughly half of the car competitors.
Shute said despite the course being shortened, he was confident that no one else left to make a run up the mountain would have beaten his time.
“It was a shame that half the field didn’t get to go to the top,” said Shute, who became the first Englishman to win the Pikes Peak Int’l Hill Climb overall. “In terms of qualifying, all the quick guys got to put in their representative times, so there wasn’t anybody at the back of the field who was going to maybe get me for the post.
“Once the first three or four cars were over the line, I was confident that that was going to be it.”
In fact, Shute said he believed the car had more speed left in it. Shute said mechanical issues slowed the car and he believes it is capable of getting up the mountain in roughly 8 minutes and 30 seconds.
“We did have a few problems during the race run, so we were nowhere near as competitive as we could have been if we didn’t have that issue,” Shute said. “The car itself had something much closer to eight and a half minutes in it. We just weren’t able to do it that day, but it was enough to go and win the event still.”
Now that’s he’s added his name to the list of overall Pikes Peak winners, will Shute make another run at the mountain next year?
You bet.
“I’m hoping to kind of look at what I’ve done this year and see what I can do next year,” Shute said. “You always want to go as fast as possible up the hill and achieve the best time we can.
“The way we do it with the team, we all had a great time along the way. It’s as much the process as it is the results for us. It’s just a great time and to get a result and to make a little bit of history, that’s kind of the cherry on top.”