Houblon

By Houblon

Goodwood Festival of Speed - Not quite FortyOneSix

It's that man Leob again, this time in his Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak rally car, which he smashed the Pikes Peak hill climb record last year. It doesn't look fast, in fact it looks like a family hatchback with a few spoilers and an ironing board on the back. But it has 875hp and weighs about 875kg so it can shift.

The talk was of him attempting to break Nick Heidfeld's hill record of 41.6S set in an F1 car in 1999. We watched two attempts and at first I thought he was backing off, but when you listen to the in car footage you can hear that just over half way along the main straight just before going under the footbridge, he has gone through all his gears and is has hit top speed of about 135 and is bouncing off the rev limiter all the way to Molecomb.

So Loeb had the fastest time of of the weekend 44.6 but no record. Would be interesting to see what he could do if they could make the gears a bit longer. i think would have been close. Fantastic to see.

Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.