When Fast Things Happen: on the Ethos of Speed (Number 1)

by Lael Ewy

Looking past the money spent (estimates on Volkswagen’s investment vary from $12 million to $40 million), and the need to re-establish itself as a green and trustworthy brand after its diesel scandal, Romain Dumas’ record-breaking run up Pike’s Peak in the all electric VW IDR brings together a few important elements: an incredible car, an incredible driver, and a series of deeply American ironies.

Dumas and the IDR passed our viewing point near the start line of the Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb in a little less than a second. It’s hard to unpack what we experienced when this happened: a rush of wind, a whine of tires, Dumas using all of the road.

A note on that: the road up Pike’s Peak is small-shouldered, with native grasses growing up at its edge between the road and the ditch, which is dipped for erosion control.

Dumas had the IDR’s two right wheels hanging over the road’s edge as he navigated this first turn, casting a puff of grass up, the pummeled blades floating down in his wake like snow.

Dumas knows the road, well enough that he knew even this slight bend down low would need to have the life wrung out of it if he were to break Sébastien Loeb’s record. And he did. Seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds after the start line, he was at the summit, 5,000 feet higher and 156 turns safely, and quickly, behind him.

With a factory effort for a race like PPIHC, rare in that it has an “unlimited” class where no real formula except speed applies, the unseen negotiation is between the needs of the fans to see neat gear and the manufacturer to meet its ends.

VW IDR, Driver's Door

VW wants youth to be excited about the car, and, by extension, the brand. VW wants you to buy the “ID”-branded electric vehicles it puts out in the world. Both buyer and seller know full well this isn’t really the same stuff you’d get in the record-beating car, but you buy the shine, the glow off that phenomenal run up America’s Mountain.

This has always been the way with racing: there’s nothing in a NASCAR “stocker” that you can get in your local dealer; ironically, your daily driver is a good deal more sophisticated and refined. But that’s not the point. It’s the heart of the art of the win.

So even if VW spent $40 million and not $12 million, it’s cheap advertising, a small, quick step back toward the good graces of the average buyer.

The IDR is maybe the most sophisticated race car in the world, though—not that anybody exactly knows.

You see, to give up too much about the car means revealing the mystery. “How’d they do it?” is also a powerful draw, and it might signal to competitors how they can do it better next time. That said, VW wants the competition. A long-standing record is publicity they don’t need to repeat. If a record stands for long enough, it becomes a legend.

To lose the record, however, is also good, creating a revitalized effort to get it back, sustained hype around the epic battle, an increased interest in the tech they’ll need to get the job done.

Then there’s Dumas. Six years my junior and complaining about getting old, grouching about his gray hair, yet still youthful and bright-eyed. I imagine the arguments he had with the car’s engineers—Dumas was heavily involved in the process of the car’s design—happening in animated French, arms flying, voices raised, the camaraderie and respect they all have for one another deepening at every outrage. This is a particularly European thing, to love the others enough to argue with them, to delineate what one means to the other by carefully outlining the differences.

Another irony: like most things truly American, from jazz to Vegas to the constitution itself, the Pike’s Peak International Hill Climb is maybe better appreciated by the rest of the world. The drivers, the crowd, the coverage is all as international as the race’s name implies. The Europeans understand curves more than Americans do, used as we are to long stretches of straight-shot Intestate and streets laid out on Jefferson’s grid. A German tackles a turn assertively, whereas an American comes at it with caution, unsteadily, unused to this idea of a change in direction. And besides, during this complex transition, what to do with one’s latté, one’s phone?

We invented drag racing, after all: go straight and accelerate as fast as you can; fastest elapsed time wins. What do you want to turn for?

That said, and another irony still, the Hill Climb resembles a drag race in that way: the fastest time in your class wins, and the fastest time of the day wins from all the classes. 7:57 is now the time to beat.

Yet plenty of cars and bikes and such show up—open wheels and stockers, the random quad, motorcycles galore, more sport bikes than dirt bikes now that the whole road is paved. The race is invitation only now, but plenty of hard-working folks and well-heeled privateers still get the green light to go.

In that sense, at least, the Hill Climb, no matter how much Volkswagen spends, is still very much an American race, open to both the transnational aspirant and the hodge-podge of people that make this messed-up country home.

VW’s IDR is merely the icing on this rich cake, and Romain Dumas its latest public connoisseur.

The Spectacle and the Tingle Inside

by Lael Ewy

Everybody loves a spectacle.

Well, I don’t.

But it’s interesting enough to see others love them.

The artistry is undeniable, and, every year, the proprietors of the Pike’s PeakInternational Hill Climb bring a Red Bull Motocross trick motorcycle team in as part of their “Fan Fest,” which takes place in downtown Colorado Springs the Friday before the race. Every year, they show their stuff, promote Red Bull, and otherwise cause a scene.

A Red Bull Rider high above Tejon

Every year I go with a group of friends, and every year I remark that there seems to be fewer people than last year, and fewer race cars on display, until the motorcycle team begins flying through the air, from ramp to ramp, twisting their bikes 90 degrees off center, doing flips and various forms of creative dismounts—ranging from the super-hero elegant to the borderline obscene.

And sticking the landings, every single time.

It ought not to be all that surprising: you don’t take your show on the road until you get it good and good. “Good” requires precision and smoothness, fluency, a kinesthetic sense that goes way beyond a simple knowledge of physics. That’s where the artistry comes in; the felt sense of your self and the motorcycle in the air, the intimate knowledge of what a twist of the throttle at launch will translate into at landing.

But the people who crowd around me—and there seem to be more of them now than last year—clogging the sidewalks, boozily hooting from the bar balconies, with their dogs and their babies and their fragrance-funk in tow, are here for the spectacle, here for the show, the idiot announcer obliging their carnal desire with his barking play-by-play, the felt-sense of referred risk.

None of this would matter without “mirror neurons” firing off of that inner tingle that suggests we know how that feels, to find yourself upside down athwart a throbbing motorcycle, 30 feet above the raw asphalt.

Only we don’t. To really do what they do, they need to be in a state way beyond the mere thrill; they need to be in Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow state,” existing in a manner deeper than we sidewalk dwellers are even aware.

The spectacle, then, is imaginary: our projection of ourselves on their perceived peril.

And there’s value in that. Probably not the same as you’d get in a great novel or even the best of conversations, but for a matter of a few seconds, it’s there: the falling bodies drawing us together, drawing us in.