There are faster racing series. There are louder racing series. There are racing series that are easier to spectate and be a fan of. But none are as free and loose in terms of "run what you've brung" than hillclimbs. They're the last bastion of true, honest-to-God engineering insanity left for the average driver and enthusiast. And it's been that way since their inception.
The most famous of these hillclimbs is Pikes Peak in Colorado, as the race up the mountain is nearly 13 miles long, and only ends at 14,000 feet above sea level. It tests drivers to the max, as there's almost no room for error, and the vehicles brought to the race, as the thin air and razor-thin margins between all right and a Flight-For-Life helicopter take no prisoners. Nor suffer any poor engineering.
But again, it's an almost no-holds-barred fight, and racers can bring almost anything they want to speed up the famous mountain course. That includes insane projects like 'SendyCar,' a single-seat racecar that's powered not by a Suzuki Hayabusa-derived V8, but one that's far more German in origin. Y'all ever heard of someone slapping two BMW S1000R engines together? Yeah, neither had we.
Born from the mind of Robin Shute, himself named King of the Mountain a whopping four times, the SendyCar—a play on IndyCar—uses a Tatuus Formula 4 chassis as the basis of the racer. But instead of the 1.6-liter naturally aspirated motor that normally resides in the middle of the racecar, developing just 160 horsepower and used to train up would-be Formula 1 drivers, Shute and team stuffed a custom-built 2.3-liter V8 into it.
And then they stuck a turbo to it.
According to our friends over at Road & Track, "Behind [the driver] is that 2.3-liter engine—a custom block built by Synergy but derived from a BMW S1000 RR engine. A Borg-Warner 92-74 adds some serious punch, bringing sea level output up to about 850 hp. Shute estimates that this number is still going to be in the 'high seven hundreds' even at Pikes Peak. He estimates that the long block weighs around 130 lbs and adds that it all spins at 13,000 rpm."
The whole car supposedly weighs around 1,300 pounds without the driver, so 850 horsepower—or high 700s at altitude—is gonna scoot like a missile. For what it's worth, my Can-Am Maverick X3 Max weighs a little more but has a 7th of the power, and it boogies. There's also the fact that at speed, it's generating over 1,000 pounds of downforce thanks to all the aero surrounding that insane engine. But, as you might have guessed, it's sometimes difficult to get the damn thing to hook up, and even more of a challenge to keep it planted.
Shute narrowly missed out on winning an overall fifth time, but came in a close second, while still securing first in the super unlimited class, and also set a new course record for rear-wheel drive cars. That said, there's more to do for the SendyCar and its 2.3-liter turbocharged V8, and this won't be the last time the racecar runs.
