Sunday, July 6, 2014

2014 Pikes Peak--Nissan GT-R Takes a Class Win...

 I'd be remiss if I didn't start mentioning some of the more interesting Nissan and non-Nissan racing results in the past few weeks.  First up is Mike Skeen and his '09 Nissan GT-R at this year's edition of the Pikes Peak International HillClimb.
A regular in the Pirelli World Challenge series with stints in Grand Am, NASCAR's truck series, as well as entries into the 24 Hours of Daytona and the Baja 1000, Skeen is a well rounded driver.  Evidently wanting to add another type of racing to his resume he entered this year's PPIHC with an '09 Nissan GT-R sponsored by Hawk Performance.

Given he had just come away from a pair of wins at Road Atlanta in an Audi R8, this would be a quick change and adaptation for him.  Equal to the task, Skeen finished Pikes with a time of 9:55.471 which was good enough for 6th overall and first in the Open class, beaten out only by PPIHC champions like Nobuhiro Tajima and Greg Tracy and others.  You can see Skeen's blistering run below.  Given the untested platform and lack of experience behind the wheel at a hillclimb, Skeen is one hell of a driver...

Skeen's website: http://www.mikeskeen.com/


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That was sweet! Some of the downshifts sounded brutal but the engine and exhaust note was beautiful. Thanks for sharing.