2019 Pikes Peak
International Hillclimb
Brian Wismann
Zero Motorcycles Sr. VP of Product Development
September 4, 2019
The Motorsports “Team” at Zero is more of a hodgepodge collection of engineers, technicians, and any other role in the company that is both interested in racing and willing to give up their lunch hour on Tuesdays to meet (and eat) in a conference room. There's usually at least 3 or 4 that turn up and sometimes, pre-Covid, we could get close to a dozen to show up to talk racing. Within this inauspicious organizational structure, all racing activity at Zero has been grassroots and homegrown, supported by true volunteers and enthusiasts; even when our goal was to reach the top of the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb in Colorado as one of the only electric motorcycles racing head-to-head with some of the fastest riders on the planet.
Somewhere in late 2018 to early 2019, the idea of proving the performance of our brand-new SR/F model's powertrain at Pikes Peak came up in one of these lunch meetings. “I think Cory would do it.” Eddie Smith, one of our Lead Mechanical Engineers, had some connections to racers from his prior work experience at Buell Racing and he was excited about the prospect of putting a professional level rider, in this case Cory West, on the fastest bike Zero had ever built.
The timing made sense as we had just launched the new SR/F in February of 2019, and Pikes Peak runs in June, so we wouldn't have to worry about stealing any thunder from the marketing team in terms of the initial launch and promotion of the production bike. It would also give us 6 months (or so we thought) to get an early production version of the bike race-prepped and tested before sending it up the mountain.
My biggest fear was we were a group of volunteers, not a professional race team, and from personal experience, there's a steep learning curve in racing. I had taken a team to Pikes Peak in 2016 and I knew that having the bike ready is at best half of the battle. This specific event involves practicing right as the sun crests the mountain at zero dark thirty in the freezing cold, altitudes that will make you dizzy just standing still, and real dangers to the riders in the way of sheer drop-offs and very little room for error. Several years ago, they even caught marmots (think giant gophers native to the region) on video pushing the protective hay bales off the side of the mountain. If that's not man vs. nature, I don't know what is! On top of this, race starts don't typically move, so if you're not ready when the time comes, you've missed your window. Since Pikes Peak comes once a year, if we weren't ready in time or crashed the bike, we'd have a lot of time to stew on it before the next one…
We didn't receive our donor bike until March of 2019, leaving us with 3 months to get the bike ready to race. The team worked diligently to get the bike ready for a couple of test sessions at local tracks in preparation for the official test and qualifying sessions on the mountain. And while nothing on the build was easy, arguably the most challenging project on the whole bike was figuring out how we'd comply with the race required 120 decibel sound for electric vehicles. While most EVs would go the route of a modified siren, Zero's engineers decided to amplify a much more pleasant guitar riff in an effort to avoid driving Cory mad on his ascent.
At Pikes Peak, you race the mountain as much as your competitors. Being Cory's first ever run up the mountain at full speed and having just watched the ambulance roll for our friend Kishimoto in the run prior, I would have been happy to watch him tip toe his way to the top. But that's not Cory's style. He shot off from the starting line and set some incredible sector times on the way to holding the top spot on the timing screens for a short period of time. The fastest riders would go last in the run order with the track conditions improving with every run and eventually relegate Cory to a 5th place in the Heavyweight Motorcycle class.
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Building a racing machine is deceptively simple in its singularity of purpose, but complex in the timing and coordination of a team needed to achieve strong results. For Zero's rag-tag team of Motorsports enthusiasts, we managed to scale an incredibly steep learning curve in record time in order to allow Cory West to successfully race to the top of the nation's highest peak.
Author's note: The 2019 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb event was marred by the death of Carlin Dunne, a long-time advocate for the Motorcycle program there and supporter of improved safety for riders on the hill climb. Based on this tragic event that occurred mere hours after Cory's own run, the event organizers made the decision to discontinue the motorcycle program at Pikes Peak. Therefore, the 2019 event may be the last time motorcycles were allowed to race this historic event that has run for over 100 years. Zero is honored to have been able to play a small part in the history of this event.
DEUS & ZERO
