The conditions on race day immediately ruled out any hopes of beating the race records. “Once we saw the weather, the approach was basically about not taking any risks. We knew we had a lot more pace than everyone else. The tyre choice was clearly wets and that’s what we ran, and it was the correct decision.”
Watch his onboard run via YouTube (above) and it’s all too obvious how challenging his climb turned out to be. From a rainy start, conditions suddenly clear – before heavy fog set in the higher he climbed. For the final miles his visibility was almost down to zero.
“For the last runners it started to dry out, but they still had some of the fog,” he says. “It definitely made it nerve-wracking watching the times come through. Those who qualified poorly had a much better chance in the race. Derek Boyd put in a flier in his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo. He’d qualified way down but ended up fifth overall and was fastest over the last sector. Rod Millen was also matching his son Rhys’s times in the first two sectors. If you look at the top 10 there are a lot of Pikes Peak legends in there. It was great to see and great to be a part of that.”
Shute’s winning time was 10min 09.525sec, almost a minute slower than his first victorious run in 2019. But he was well clear of the rest. David Donner was second overall in his Porsche Turbo S in a time of 10min 34.053sec, with David Donohue – son of Penske legend Mark – third (and first in the Time Attack class) in 10min 35.830sec in a GT2 RS Clubsport.
Rod Millen returned to Pikes Peak in his famous Toyota Tacoma, in which he scored two of his five overall wins, and ended up eighth overall, two places behind son Rhys.