"Monster" smashes the Pikes Peak Hill Climb record.

The Pikes Peak Hill Climb is an oft-forgotten motor sport event and yet, is a true test of engineering greatness and driving grit. For the first time since 2007, the course record was broken by the driving genius, Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima.

The in-game Escudo and the real-life version.

I only became aware of the race’s existence playing Gran Turismo 2 on  the Playstation, around ten years ago. The quickest car in the game was the Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak Version, a near-1000 horsepower, four-wheel drive rally car, aesthetically based on a Suzuki Vitara. The car was an absolute monster in the game and once purchased, left the player incapable of losing again. Tajima has seemed similarly unbeatable driving the Suzuki and its descendants, over the past fifteen years.

The hill climb is set on the Pikes Peak mountain in Colorado. The course is a 13 mile mix of gravel and tarmac, twisting upwards to the summit of the mountain. The race itself dates back to 1916. There is now a multitude of different classes of rally car, including recognisable rally favourites such as Subaru Imprezas and Mitsubishi Evos, as well as open-wheel race specials and the fastest of all, the “Unlimited” class.

Rhys Millen's insane Hyundai Pikes Peak racer.

The Unlimited class does what is says on the tin, offering teams and drivers the chance to experiment with the limits of what is possible for rally racing. My personal favourite is the bizarre looking Red Bull Hyundai that has been raced by Rhys Millen (The son of race legend Rod Millen) in recent years. This is a car that resembles a Le Mans car from a distance, but is actually much smaller, offering 700hp in a body that weighs around 800Kg, giving a much higher power-to-weight ratio than a modern Le Mans racer can offer. The four-wheel-drive system means that this immense power is spread evenly across the car. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK6EN1LpHio&feature) Pikes Peak is on of few races in which engineers can go wild and experiment with the absolute limits of a car’s performance.

The record breaking Suzuki SX4, a modern version of the Escudo, puts out 910hp, but weighs more than the Rhys Millen Hyundai and looks a little more civilised. Yet, Millen could only manage a time over ten minutes. The Suzuki SX4, driven perfectly by Tajima completed the course in 9 minutes, 51 seconds, the first ever sub-ten minute time in the history of the race.

The 2011 Suzuki SX4 - Pikes Peak Version

Tajima himself setup Suzuki’s in-house motor sport division, Suzuki-Sports and has been racing at Pikes Peak since 1992. Tajima’s only worthy adversary was Rod Millen, who himself was the record holder at the course from 1994, in an insane 800hp Toyota Celica, until Tajima broke the record in 2007. However, Tajima finally broke the ten minute barrier this weekend and has now surely asserted himself as the outright master of the course.

Unfortunately, modern motor sport has become increasingly restricted, which offers safer circumstances for drivers and spectators, but doesn’t excite the mad scientist inside me. The Pikes Peak Unlimited class offers an intriguing blend of bonkers, yet skilful engineering and undaunted drivers pushing every component of the car to their limit. If there is a similar type of circuit racing that exists, then please let me know. If there isn’t, I’d be more than willing to help with the insurance papers to set it up.

The Lamborghini Gallardo - my first taste of supercar awesomeness.

A workhorse Vauxhall VXR8 demo-car
 and a more exotic Lamborghini Gallardo. 

Yesterday I finally had my first true supercar experience. My girlfriend bought me a “Supercar Blast” with Everyman Racing for my birthday last year and, having booked it several months ago, it was finally time to drive a Lamborghini round a track for a few laps. On the phone I had been told I’d be driving a Murcielago and I was disappointed when I arrived to discover that I would instead be driving the smaller, slower Lambo, the Gallardo. However, having driven the car in its original spec, I now realise that 500 horsepower and four-wheel-drive in a car that weighs less than 1500Kg provides more than enough oomph for a supercar virgin like myself. The abundance of workhorse Vauxhalls and Subarus as well as the exotic Aston Martins, Ferraris and Lamborghinis there was enough to keep me entertained while I waited nearly an hour to start my drive. However, this was because I got there far too early, because I was too excited to stay in bed that morning, not because of an administrative issue with the event. 

Until yesterday, the fastest driving I had witnessed was from the passenger seat of a BMW M3 (with the Competition Pack fitted), on my way to lunch with Nick Trott and Steven Dobie of Evo Magazine, during my work experience there last year. With Nick Trott at the wheel, I felt safe as I knew he would have driven an abundance of supercars at high speed. With me at the steering wheel, in control of a 500 horsepower throttle, it was a very strange experience, involving a conflict between my head, my heart and my driving instructor, Phil. In my mind I was constantly thinking “slow down you idiot, you can’t go through a chicane at over 100mph,” while my heart demanded more of me: “you’ve got four laps in this car so make the most of it, and if you do die at least it’ll be in a flaming ball of Lamborghini!” My instructor was impressed with my willingness to full-throttle out of the corners, but did think I broke too early and too hard, but that was the result of my head, I’m afraid. I could not believe the speeds at which the Gallardo could take corners, particularly as this is considered to be one of the less-hardcore, playboys’ supercars and not a race-car for the road. Overall, I scored 35/40, but I’m assuming the instructor would award marks generously as most people are there as a result of a birthday or Christmas present. It’s unlikely they would simply say “you were terrible so I’m giving you five out of forty. Happy Birthday.”

The Gallardo I drove - not the nicest colour choice, but
an absolute beast behind the wheel.

As for the car, it was incredible. The Gallardo hasn’t always received favourable reviews from experienced motoring journalists who can obviously outline the minute differences between the various supercars that are available, mainly due to its sensible four-wheel-drive system and single-clutch paddle shift gearbox. However, because the fastest car I had driven until yesterday was a diesel Ford Focus, during my Pass Plus, I thought the Gallardo was mesmerising. Firstly, when I climbed inside I was introduced to an incredible amount of black leather and very luxurious switchgear. Whilst I’m aware that most of this is borrowed from Audi, it still felt very special. I also had to acquaint myself with a paddle gear-shift system which I have never used before and when attempting to select first gear to set off, I inevitably hit the windscreen-wiper stalk, resulting in an embarrassing flourish of the wipers for all the queuing customers to see.

We set off, slowly at first but had a clearing of traffic for some distance, so I began to pick up speed quite quickly. My first challenge was to get over the sheer force that the car generates in a straight line. Imagine a go-kart, that can accelerate to well over 100mph, very quickly, and sounds like a howling Barry White receiving a prostate examination – that’s what the Gallardo felt and sounded like. The next challenge was to force myself, under instruction from Phil, to go through the chicane of cones at over 100mph, which just felt wrong to me. The car took it all in its stride and we began to go faster and faster with every lap until, on my last official lap, we got stuck behind an OAP in an Aston Martin Vantage. Despite my flashes of the high-beams he failed to move out of the way. Luckily, Phil decided I could have an extra couple of laps as the Aston driver had been so annoying and because it took nearly a lap to creep past him cautiously. As a result of this luck, I decided to hammer it as hard as my stomach would allow in the corners. By the end of my stint, I felt like a maraca at a Tito Puente concert – shaken up with a cool film of sweat over me. The Gallardo had certainly done its job, offering bags of excitement within the safe confines of a four-wheel-drive system.

Given that I never really pushed the car as hard as it could go, I cannot report as to whether that four-wheel-drive system is a limitation on the thrills the car can provide, or not. I never put on enough throttle in the corners to experience understeer, or oversteer, but I am sure there are many more experienced drivers who could. The only frustration was getting used to the paddle gear-shift. Phil said that I should keep the throttle on when shifting up, to gain smoother changes, but this was something I couldn’t get used to in the time I had with the car, as I’ve only ever driven manual cars before. I inevitably lifted on my gear changes and this did cause a very jerky shift, something which I’m sure typifies a single-clutch, semi-automatic gearbox when the driver is unsure how to use it. I’m sure that, in time, I would get used to it and the idea of never using a clutch when stuck in traffic, but still having control over gear-shifts is an extremely enticing one.

As you can imagine, I’ve been searching the internet all night for equivalent cars which I can afford – Toyota MR2s, MG TFs and even Honda Beats. However, I’ve come to realise now that these would only provide 10% of the thrills the Lamborghini did, especially when pinned down by road laws and speed-cameras. Such attempts to emulate a Gallardo with about £4000 to spend are futile. Either way, the smouldering desire for a new, sportier car that was within me has now inflamed into a raging inferno of determination. I am about to leave the house and look for a new car and it is all thanks to my supercar experience yesterday. Thanks to Phil and Everyman Racing for providing me with the most exciting twenty minutes of driving I’ve ever had. 

Parklife Festival – A money-making dog poo in the middle of Platt Fields Park

I purchased my Parklife weekend ticket in April this year, as a pre-emptive present to myself for finishing my exams and for completing my degree at university. Unfortunately, the planned enjoyment merely turned to frustration and annoyance at the entire event and its organisers. I had intended for this to be a more positive review of the event but from the start of Mistajam’s DJ set in the Metropolis tent on Saturday afternoon, things began to spiral downhill and I would advise anybody against going next year, no matter how enticing the line-up will be.

Firstly, let me make it clear that there were some positive aspects to the Parklife event. There was the price, which amounted to around £65, including the booking fee for the event, which considering the enormous line-up of A and B-List dance music DJs and artists was an incredible price. (Here's the line-up in detail: http://www.skiddle.com/festivals/Parklife/lineup.html) Virtually every important dance music DJ from Britain was there, including Andy C, Erol Alkan and Skream & Benga who are all amongst the biggest names in their particular dance genre. Furthermore, there were an abundance of upcoming artists as well, including Katy B and Sbtrkt, all of whom delivered, in my opinion, very individualistic and interesting performances. Thirdly, there was the impressive abundance of noise resonating from the main stage’s speakers which was an encouraging sign when first entering the festival at midday on Saturday, especially after the bombardment of a freak hail storm. Finally, all of the artists I saw performed superbly – the DJs were constantly throwing in mixes left-right-and-centre and the majority of the artists I saw elaborated brilliantly on their release tracks to create a unique song for that performance, excluding Two Door Cinema Club, who merely played their album tracks in perfect succession and left the stage swiftly.

However, in the case of Parklife, I’m afraid the cons outweighed the pros and after several hours I found myself extremely frustrated with almost every other aspect of the festival. I shall outline the two most frustrating of these issues. Firstly, the sound systems in all of the tents were simply pathetic. At most festivals, the front of the stage should be bathed in an array of speakers and the pillars which uphold the tent should also be lined with smaller speakers in order to create a truly ear-blowing sound, coupled with a monstrously powerful bass. However, at Parklife, all of the tents had around ten speakers which doubled up, supposedly, as a treble and a bass output, and there were no speakers placed on the tent pillars. In the larger tents, there were two pairs of these same speakers at the back of the tent as well, but to my laughable surprise, during Skrillex’s set, I noticed that these were out of sync with the front speakers. All of these issues lead to a tinny, quiet and echoed sound, which is unforgivable given that dance music (which was the most represented genre at Parklife) requires a large sound-system to add to the ambience and power of the songs. 

At first, I did not notice this problem and during Jakwob’s set in the Metropolis tent, where initially there was a small audience, there seemed to be no problem, especially as my friend and I were beside the front set of speakers. However, as the tent filled out, during Riot Jazz’s differentiated, if a little dull, performance the sound quality began to deteriorate. By the time Mistajam arrived on stage for the start of his set, the tent was bulging with loyal followers of the Radio 1 DJ. As a fan of his more edgy dance music selection, I was excited to see what he could do with two decks, a Macbook and a mixer. However, the sound system was horrendously quiet by now and given the more aggressive style of music Mistajam had intended to play, this was ridiculous. I found myself able to talk at room-volume to my friend next to me without any misinterpretation. Mistajam himself demanded, on the microphone, for the sound system to be turned up and eventually rallied the crowd into a frenzy, chanting “we want it louder.” (http://www.twitvid.com/XUKHB) In response the sound engineer at the back simply shrugged his shoulders and gave a cheeky grin – pathetic. (This gives you an idea of just how quiet it was: http://www.youtube.com/user/ParklifeFest#p/search/0/LGhKLq8qvjs)  

This issue continued throughout the weekend. SBTRKT put on a great set on Sunday, but it was no louder than a whisper and Andy C and Nero’s sets in the Hospitality tent were fainter than a whimpering shrew. Speaking to one of the artists, I discovered that they had been promised that the sound systems would be turned-up after 8pm, in order to keep the Mancunian  neighbours happy, but this failed to ever happen. The only place where the music was loud enough was the small Desperado’s tent, in which marketing messages of the tequila-beer drink were aplenty, but unfortunately, good music was not.

The second issue I found with the festival, which to me, was even more inexcusable, was that many of the times on the programme were incorrect. When my friends and I first entered the arena we purchased two of the lanyard programmes which were £5 each. This didn’t seem an unreasonable price as it would help us get to the acts we wanted to see, when we wanted see them, offering times and places for the sets of different artists, but when you consider that it did not come with artist descriptions, as is usually the case at festivals, it wasn’t such a great deal. Furthermore, we came to realise, after about three hours, that most of these times were wrong, particularly for the Metropolis, Hospitality and Now Wave! tents, which I had intended to live in, during the first day of the festival.. As a result, we returned to the sales-booth to get a refund. The manageress began to state that at “all festivals” artists get the times mixed up and there are often mishaps such as this. In my experience of five previous festivals, this has never happened, excluding Chemical Brother’s cancellation during Gatecrasher 2008 – the worst festival I had been to, prior to Parklife 2011. She stated that, as a result of this “mix-up” they had placed the newly organised times on each of the tents entrances and speaker set-ups. This was true, but my argument to her was that if they knew that the times on the programmes were wrong, why were they still selling them at full price, not a reduced one and why were they not telling customers that there were these issues. She conceived no response to this argument other than to say that they are “expensive to print.” Brilliant. It seems that the customer-comes-first approach had been thrown out of the window by the organisers of Parklife. She did give us a refund, eventually, but at the same time was sending out three new orange-shirted sellers with hundreds of lanyards around their necks, ready to sell these pointless programmes to unsuspecting festival-goers. In my opinion, this was a deliberate and inexcusable attempt to mislead the customer in order to make as much money as possible.

So, if you like a huge line-up of artists who will give their all on stage, despite a pathetic sound system which almost eradicates any point of seeing that artist live, as well as being ripped-off for a dodgy programme of set-times, then maybe Parklife 2012 will be right up your street. All the artists I saw performed well over-par, but the sound system issue meant that half the point of seeing them was gone. In the future I will simply have to assume, in the case of music festivals, that if the price looks to good to be true it probably is. I would have been better off staying at home and listening to those artists' mixes and live performances on an iPod - surely that's the worst thing one can say about a festival?

Audi on Pole at Le Mans. A done deal?

Le Mans is considered as one of the most important races in motor sport and it is my personal favourite. Not only is it a great test of technological supremacy, as is the case with Formula One, but also, a test of the endurance of the drivers and also the reliability of the vehicles involved. As a Honda owner, I appreciate the merits of considering reliability when building a car and Audi have done it better than most for the past ten years at Le Mans.

Only two other manufacturers have scraped a victory over Audi this century. Bentley managed it in 2003 and Peugeot overcame its usual reliability issues in 2009. There is no other major racing series where a single team has proved to be so dominant, for such a long time. In recent years, Audi’s winning formula hasn’t been all-out speed. Peugeot, for example, have always qualified ahead of Audi since their first Le Mans outing in 2007. This tradition was broken tonight when Audi qualified in first place. Audi have adopted a technique of consistency. Audi’s Le Mans cars have habitually proved more reliable than those of their challengers and the team strives to improve every finite detail of the racing effort, prior to the race. But, enough of sycophancy. One must focus on this years race as well.

Peugeot (left) and Audi will do battle once again at Le Mans.

Whilst Peugeot had the fastest car in the first qualifying session, in the second opportunity, this evening, Audi gained first and second place for the start of the race. It seems as though it won't be business-as-usual at this stage of the race. It is clear that, yet again, the battle for top spot will be between the two diesel powerhouses: Audi and Peugeot as they dominated the qualifying session. These two great adversaries have battled for the title every year since 2007. Typically, Peugeot have the faster car, gaining faster lap times until they suffer from reliability issues and Audi swoop past calmly and coolly; a tortoise-and-hare situation. This circumstance acts as a rather precise depiction of the reputation of these two car manufacturers’ road cars as well: Audis are solidly built and Peugeots are not. For the first time since 2006, however, it appears that Audi have the fastest car this year. Whoever does win will undoubtedly use that victory for a range of PR and advertising messages for the following year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKMB2i1I1h4 Peugeot put this advert out shortly after winning at Le Mans in 2009

Who would I put my faith in for the overall victory? All the evidence leading towards this year’s race is exactly the same as it has been for years. Peugeot won the 1000km race at Spa this year, as they have every year since 2007. Once again, the Peugeots have proven to be Audi's closest competitors at Le Sarthe. However, this happens every year and every year (except for 2009) Peugeot fail to cut the mustard during the actual race. I maintain that Audi will win the Le Mans 24 Hours this weekend. Watching this incredible documentary, Truth in 24, really shows what it takes to win this race and how Audi have achieved this goal in the past few years, even though it does act as some serious propaganda: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320302 Just ignore Jason Statham's awful attempts to pronounce the place names. 

Other points of interest at this year’s race, for me, include the new Toyota-engined Judd racer, which qualified in fifth place. This entrance suggests that Toyota may re-enter the endurance-racing scene themselves. Given how explosive their previous Le Mans entry, the Toyota GT One was at Le Mans, this is an exciting prospect.

Aston Martin's team with the two ugly ducklings.

Aston Martin have also entered a brand new model, the AMR-One. However, it seems to be the comical entry of the entire class. Firstly, it is, without a doubt, the ugliest Aston Martin ever made, even when compared to the door-wedge Lagonda saloon of the 1970s. Secondly, at a time when all other competitors are putting roofs on their cockpit to make their cars more aerodynamic, Aston Martin has taken the roof off their new model.

To sum up, I'm declaring that I believe Audi will win the race, in some form or another. They have qualified in first and second place. Given that speed is normally Audi's downfall, it seems they have closed the gap on Peugeot, leaving only reliability as an issue, which is typically the cause of Peugeot's failures, not Audi. This may be academic if Audi and Peugeot battle so determinedly they both crash all three of their cars, leaving the bat-faced Aston to take the victory.