PEAKY BLINDER
Behind the scenes with Bentley at Pikes Peak, then behind the wheel of its brutal GT3 challenger. Not for the faint-hearted…
IT’S A FOUR TURN OVAL, SO I GUESS THIS IS TURN 2, but the way the car crawls back up the banking as I power onto the back straight never fails to alarm me. I can’t fight it – well, I could but that would be unwise – it’s just what happens as the angle reduces and the car takes its natural path out towards a convergence with a very unforgiving concrete wall. It moves fast, this wall, seeming to descend to meet me as I rise, then to steam alongside like a frantically puffing runaway locomotive until I gladly peel off into the friendly infield.
After five laps I have a new-found respect for all NASCAR drivers, and feel I’ve been driving a car that gives me a bit of that flavour. Because, boy, does it makes a good noise, this wild and bewinged Bentley.
But this car is not for here. And compared with what it’s designed for, an oval is a stroll in a meadow. This is Bentley’s Continental GT3 Pikes Peak, and yesterday that’s where it was, blasting up the mountain, aiming to set a hill record in the super competitive Time Attack 1 class.
On every other day of the year, Pikes is open to tourists, so I joined them and toddled up. And you know what, even at 25mph “America’s mountain” is bloody alarming. I’m not just saying that. If exposed heights give you any sort of tremor whatsoever, if you have any imagination for what could happen if you got a bit sideways coming out of a hairpin, let alone if the wing fell off at 130mph, a 25mph rumble up those 12.42 miles and 156 turns will cause the palms to prickle.
And you think it’s just going to be the top half, where the view through the windscreen is a diagonal slash between orange rock and white sky, where the grey tarmac often surfs that margin, forcing you to tightrope that oh-so open edge. But no, lower down it’s trees. Famously unforgiving. The accident will be over sooner, no cartoony hang time before the mountain’s bare embrace, instead the sudden hard stop. That there have only been seven deaths over the race’s 99-year history is, I think, remarkable.
“AFTER FIVE LAPS I HAVE A NEW-FOUND RESPECT FOR ALL NASCAR DRIVERS”
"NEITHER MAN NOR MACHINE CAN GET ENOUGH AIR IN"
How to make a Continental GT look small: fit it with preposterous aero devices. The regulations permit them to extend way beyond the usually imposing bodywork, enabling sticky downforce at lower speeds. This car started life as a GT3 racer, so uses a production chassis and bodyshell before the weight reduction begins.
Powering this contraption is a relatively familiar motor – the twin turbo 4.0-litre V8. Open the bonnet and it seems to peek timidly out from under the bulkhead. Don’t let that deceive you. It’s been entirely re-engineered to cope with a massive power boost. In GT3 race trim it runs about 550bhp – here, where there are no limits, Bentley... is being coy. All it’ll say is that it develops 750–1,000bhp thanks to new pistons and conrods, higher pressure turbos and a new and far more extensive cooling system. Those big ducts behind the doors gulp air down for a new boot mounted radiator pack in addition to the one up front.
Altitude is a killer. The Pikes start line is at 2,862 metres (higher than the top station in plenty of European ski resorts), the finish at 4,302 metres. Plenty of cars, including the Bentley, carry a green triangular ‘O2 on board’ sticker, meaning the driver is using oxygen to keep their wits about them. Just walking around the pit area here can have you panting. An ill-advised 20m jog at the summit, just to see what would happen, had me developing tunnel vision.
This affects the cars in the same way. Neither man nor machine can get enough air in. It’s not there for the engine to ingest, nor to flow over the cooling packs. Tuning for the “Race to the Clouds” is a dark art, there’s muttering about
“THE GT3 PIKES PEAK MAKES YOU FEEL LIKE A HERO”
turbos and manifold pressure, but no one speaks openly. Hence Bentley’s power claims. So let’s assume 750bhp on the hill, 1,000bhp at sea level.
So I’ve probably got 850–900bhp to play with at the 1,900m high Pikes Peak International Raceway. You can see the mountain from here – it dominates the skyline over Colorado Springs – but trade descriptions could have something to say about its distant positioning relative to the mountain.
The race didn’t pan out for Bentley and driver Rhys Millen, a 26-time Pikes Peak competitor and two-time outright winner. Although Colorado had recently basked in mid-30ºCs, the night before the race the temperature dropped well below zero. Snow fell, ice developed on the tarmac. Ironically, before the top section’s dirt surface was paved over this wouldn’t have been such an issue. But it meant the start line was brought down to Devil’s Playground, three miles and 400m lower. Then, towards the end of Millen’s run, a backfire into the inlet manifold was explosive enough to tear the thick carbon, resulting in pressure loss about a mile from the finish. An expected easy class win over the Porsche 911 GT2 RS of Romain Dumas turned into a five second deficit, a potential win into fourth place overall out of the 55 starters.
Even on the oval’s open apron and with a breeze to carry it away, the Conti stinks on start-up. At the Peak, Bentley’s paddock spot was next to the portable loos (don’t think it’s glamorous at Pikes, it’s basically a one-day farmers’ market for high octane machinery) and initially I assumed the whiff came from there
– a weird, chemically smell. Renewable biofuel, it turns out... 85 per cent greenhouse gas emission reduction over standard fuel, 850 per cent worse nostril assault.
Once warmed through the smell improves, and Rhys goes out to check the new inlet manifold, replaced overnight. The car sounds like a thunderclap. Proper old school V8 fire and brimstone erupts from exhausts that exit behind the front wheels. From the pitlane I can not only hear but feel every piston detonation bouncing off the retaining walls, and when Rhys lifts off for the first turn, flames lick up the sides of the car. Angry, harsh and unfiltered it’s a long way from Bentley’s refined, cultured norm.
Rhys insists it’s less furious to drive than it sounds. “We actually set up the suspension before the aero, because I didn’t want it too stiff and that’s what aero usually tells you to do. It means I have more confidence in its mechanical grip for the lower speed sections, so when I start the race I actually overdrive it for the first two corners, go in too hot and too hard, work out what’s going on with the grip and from that point I can trust it.”
I will not be going in too hot and too hard. I lash myself into the deep seat and pull the Fanatec steering wheel into my chest. It’s more of a yoke actually, but the engineers have attached a lower connecting arm between the sides to give Rhys an extra hand grab for hairpins. There’s a built-in digital display and when I give the steering a turn I notice the gear number stays upright, while the screen spins around it. Neat. And quite useful when the steering wheel is rarely straight.
The GT3 Pikes Peak makes you feel like a hero. It’s because it’s got some movement in it, a bit of roll and travel. Most racing cars are so rigid it’s very hard to work out where the limits are, so unless you’re a pro you skate nervously around, unsure what will happen when you approach them. Here, you get information from the compression of springs, the squidge of dampers.
Only in one spot on each lap does it feel awkward, that damn exit of turn two, where there’s a bump as the surface changes and, loaded up, the Bentley just corkscrews through momentarily. It’s fine, the car deals with it, but it’s not one of those motions that’s over before it’s begun, you almost have time to react. Which would be the wrong thing to do. Let the car do the work.
Nail it down the back straight and then peel flat out onto the infield section. Hard on the brakes, down from fifth to second, the changes wumph through, the car angling over slightly as I turn in. And that feels great; with pressure going through the suspension I can work out what grip the tyre has, get a better idea of what’s left to give.
But it’s the low speed traction that’s so impressive. It doesn’t as much squat detectably at the back as it does roll at the front but there’s still give in it – and because of that, slightly less feedback and accuracy from the rear as I get back on the power. But my main takeaway is that I could’ve buried the throttle sooner. For the next few laps I try to work out how much sooner. Before I leave the brakes alone seems to be the conclusion. The traction out of corners is just ridiculous. So too this car’s ability to absorb kerbs as if they weren’t there. Which all means you can take big liberties with everything from the apex onwards. On the hill I imagine this must be a boon, the car able to attack bumps, to put a wheel where it probably doesn’t belong.
If I’m honest, the brakes don’t hit as hard as I’d expected, and even with a fair few vertical metres involved I thought 850bhp working on 1,350kg would pack an even bigger punch. But then, as shift up lights flash on the dash I catch sight of the speedo reading 240kph (150mph) and realise it’s the car, so well balanced and friendly that it disguises the speed it’s accruing.
And look at the size of the thing it’s having to drag through the air behind it. At 150mph there’s probably enough pressure to not have to lift through turns one and two, to go full NASCAR and just gently lift to get the nose gripped and settled before powering on through. This Bentley feels stable and composed enough to manage that. This driver, however, knows how puckering it is when the wall comes down to meet him. But given a choice between wall and air, he knows he’d take wall any day.