Piking out

Sebastien Loeb isn't particularly into weeping because he has no more worlds to conquer. The nine-times-consecutive-and-reigning-champion of the World Rally Championship, greatest rally driver in history, former champion gymnast and freelance Tom Brady impersonator is going through a staged retirement this year, winding his WRC involvement back to four events (in which he has so far finished first, second and first with his home event in France to come). Citroen, for whom he won all nine world titles, have him under contract to run World Touring Cars in 2014. In the meantime he's pottering about with his self-run World Endurance sportscar team running McLarens at Le Mans and the like. And having a bit of a run in this thing.

'This thing' is the Peugeot 208 T16 'Pikes Peak', the spiritual successor to the terrifying billion horsepower 'Group B' Peugeot 205 T16s of mid-1980s world rallying, which once banned from the WRC found themselves as the basis of the Froggy Lion's Paris-Dakar winners of the later '80s. The same architecture, draped in fuck-off-ludicrous wings and turbo engine overboosted to the stratosphere, was handed to Ari Vatanen in the form of the 1988 405 T16 and pointed in the direction of the infamous Pikes Peak hillclimb in Colorado.

The result was a lot of perforated eardrums. And back-to-back Pikes Peak titles for the 405 T16. Being French, they got fairly pretentious about it. Professor Jean-Louis Loubet, head of the Department of History at Evry-Val d’Essonne University:

"In the wake of the Drivers' and Manufacturers' World Rally Championship titles secured by Peugeot with the 205 Turbo 16 in 1985 and 1986, the so-called Group B cars were deemed too powerful and promptly outlawed at the end of the 1986 season. This gave Peugeot a chance to turn its attention to other challenges and put the car through its paces in other parts of the world. Pikes Peak is a metaphor for the American dream: it takes place in Colorado where the sense of freedom and space provides the inspiration to take on the very highest summits. It was a period when Peugeot was successful in everything it entered, from the World Rally Championship to the Dakar Rally, and the American event represented a fresh challenge..."

(Why doesn't some fusty humanities prick from Monash or USyd faff lyrical about Brocky winning Bathurst nine times, that's what I want to know)

The notorious Pikes Peak gravel has been progressively sealed over the past few years, and is now completely tarmac base to apex, all 19.99km and 156 corners of it. Which makes a fairly-well-credentialled-on-asphalt rally driver the perfect pick for Peugeot's assault on the all-time Pikes Peak track record, currently held by second-gen Kiwi rally star Rhys Millen at 9m46.164s in a Hyundai. Yes, a Hyundai.

Not exactly a rented Accent from Thrifty though.

Loeb's been testing the 206 T16 on Mont Ventoux, probably better known for its mid-year prominence as a perennial stage of the Tour de France than as a tarmac rally stage, but it does look to serve well as a local analogue of Pikes Peak in its current form. The shame, of course, is that its current form is all-sealed, and the gravel is all gone. Sure, tarmac is faster. But it's hardly as much fun.

Yes, this entire post was just an excuse to link the video of 'Climb Dance', because it's made entirely of fucking awesome. C'est magnifique, or something.

The Doctor is OUT.