THE MOUNTAIN DOES NOT CARE

A BITTERSWEET FINISH CAPS MY ROOKIE RUN UP PIKES PEAK

-  JONNY LIEBERMAN

You want to hear God laugh? Make some plans. Mine: Compete in the 100th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, racing to the top of the famous mountain. Most people's response upon hearing about what I had planned was a good-natured version of, "Try not to die!"

Pikes Peak, as you might have heard, is about as extreme as motorsports get. Dying was the last thing on my agenda, however. First was to make it to the top. Second was to make it to the top quickly. These were of course my plans before I arrived in Colorado. I soon learned the mountain doesn't even bother with a chuckle. The mountain does not care.

I ran in the Porsche Pikes Peak Trophy by Yokohama class, driving a 2019 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport along with four other virtually identical Porsches, plus a previous-generation GT4 Clubsport with a balance-of-performance-type tune. It was my rookie run up the mountain, and the entire experience proved to be far more complex, more mentally and physically grueling, and more emotional than I had accounted for.

I wish I could have bottled how fantastic I felt on Friday morning, two days before the race. Friday was an optional session day following three early mornings of mandatory practice. Participation in optional sessions carries a risk versus reward calculation: The car has made it this far, so why chance catastrophe before race day? The trick is to balance that risk against the truism that time spent driving up Pikes Peak is more valuable than gold.