Pikes Peak Week Begins with Testing – Pat Doran Style.

This is going to be a long, grueling week and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I have been racing here for a decade, and now covering the Pikes Peak  International Hill Climb as a contributor and photographer for My Life at Speed.  No matter how much I complain about how I have been uncomfortable being a spectator here –simply because I’d rather be in a car hauling ass up the hill — the competitor in me wants my rear in the seat hauling ass up the hill.

The Peak is like home for me, and the people who run it and race here are my family.  It’s my one time each year to see them all in the same place.   It’s a reunion of sorts, even though the pace is hectic and we don’t really get a chance to sit and talk as much as we’d like.  I like being around the people I love and respect most  in my racing family.  With the exception of my wife and kids, this is my extended family and luckily for me…my wife Jen understands. It is who I am, why I tick and even at some level what “completes me”.

This family is like any other.  Dysfunctional at times, and we don’t always agree or get along, but each year we always find ourselves here, and the slate has always been wiped clean by the passing of another busy (seemingly too short – Ask Cody Loveland, LoveFab) year.

This year, unlike last, I was able to schedule the full week away from my “real” job so I could attend each and every moment of what I like to call “Hell Week” or maybe my “Re-invent myself week.”

I made my way from California to Colorado across the “Loneliest Highway in America”, US Route 50, which traverses Nevada and part of Utah, then into Colorado on I-70, through Glenwood Canyon before finally ending up at a Top Secret test facility somewhere in the high country for a very special, very private test.  There were a ton of really amazing scenes along the way, and I would love to show you photos, but I neglected to take any.  I was making GREAT time so I just blasted through and recorded the images in my mental rolodex for later review.  Guess I’m still a driver first?

ANYWAY…more about this test.  I heard about it from a source and had to promise to keep the location confidential, so that’s all I’m going to say about that… seriously, I really can keep a secret.  The important part is that the tester was super talented racing driver Pat Doran, and the test subject was a way-too-fast-for-you Ford RS200 that recently made it’s way across the pond from the team shop near Brighton.  That’s in England, kids.

Enough with the banter.  Here are just a handful of my favorite shots from the test.

Lots more coming this week.  Stay tuned.

Here are the rest of the photos from today’s test:

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