There are a ton of crazy stories from Pikes Peak. I have been fascinated by the Kerns’ story for a while. Why? Well their sheer determination has been pretty impressive over the years! Imagine heading up that mountain in a Mazda GTX and thinking, “Wow, we need something faster” then building a Mitsubishi EVO and setting a class record!
Then imagine that every year after that you have some “event” that knocks you out of contention. Simple things like intercooler hosing failures, major events like motor failure, other events like clutch issues or a fairly major crash. Now imagine that every year they manage to make it to the top and their time is still reasonable and their record has yet to be broken. Soon they will have a full run on the mountain and they will be able to challenge their own record!
This year they had a crash, that pushed them into a guard rail. The same corner that took out their competitor Stephan Verdier. After assessing their car, they were able to push on however. Broken suspension, missing tire and all. Ride along with the Kerns for their full race run and see what they went through in order to finish in 4th place in their class, 15 seconds down from the leader!
Also take a moment to read their account of their race week on RaceKern.com.
