PPIHC Practice: Pat Doran and Team Get Things Together After A ‘Mishap’

Pikes Peak International Hill Climb: Practice – Getting Things Together After A ‘Mishap’

When things go wrong at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, as they did for Pat Doran during testing this morning, sometimes recovery is an impossibility. Particularly when your off pavement excursion was as hard of a hit as Pat’s. The door and back-end of the car were ripped off completely since he went off backward, but the front and undercarriage suffered damage, as well. Pat and his team, however, are not quite ready to throw in the towel for something so trivial as an unplanned close-up encounter with mother nature. As soon as they could get the car off the hill and back down to Revolutions Performance, they were well on their way to getting things pieced back together.

Here’s the video from that crash:

Speaking with Pat this evening he was very clear that the incident was a schoolboy error completely of his doing. As of 10:30 local time tonight (Tuesday, June 25th), the car is back together and ready to qualify Wednesday morning. Great work by Pat Doran and his entire dedicated team.

Down to the bare bones.

Pat doing some fiberglass work.

Getting things lined up.

Fiberglass and trees coming together at high speed – Tree wins.

Re-aligning a door that was ripped from the car.

Smoothing out the new bodywork.

Other repairs were going on at Revolutions, as well. Dave Carapetyan’s team were there modifying a new throttle body for the Magnus Motorsports built 4G63. The throttle shaft on his original unit broke during practice yesterday at PPIR.

Roy Tomkins of ODR Motorsport Engineering welds a flange on the new BBK Throttle Body. The old, broken unit can be seen to the right.

Roy’s unique welding footwear.