Robin Shute

 From the flattest corner of England to three victories at Pikes Peak, the most celebrated hillclimb in the USA: meet the new (British) King of the Mountain

- James Page

MARIO ANDRETII PROBABLY put it best when he said that Pikes Peak was pure madness but incredible’ The legendary Italian-born American won the Race to the Clouds in 1969, a time when the Colorado hillclimb was still very much Unser Mountain thanks to the success of Louis, Bobby and Al Unser, but the domestic stranglehold on Pikes Peak weakened during the 1980s, when the rallying superstars from Europe started to make the trip across the Atlantic. They were led by Michele Mouton, who in 1985 became the first non-American driver to take overall victory there. Since then, the likes of Rod and Rhys Millen, Nobuhiro Tajima, Sébastien Loeb and Romain Dumas have maintained international dominance of this very American event.

And now there’s a new King of the Mountain. British racer Robin Shute has won there three times in only five visits pretty impressive for someone who grew up in Norfolk, one of the UK’s flattest counties. His father, Tony, had a long career with Lotus as a development driver and programme leader, and in 2011 Robin started his own career as an automotive engineer with Tesla in California. The West Coast location helped, as did the generous signing-on bonus, which he used as a downpayment on a Corvette C6.

He'd done some circuit racing along the way, and got his first taste of Pikes Peak in 2017. He was working for Faraday Future by then, and the company wanted to generate some publicity by entering the hillclimb with its 1000bhp FF 91. The intention had been for a Formula E driver to take the wheel but, when that deal failed to materialise, Shute found himself in the hot seat.