PPIHC: Carlin Dunne & Lightning Motorcycles Beat All Gas Bikes at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

It wasn’t the outright course record that we had hoped for, but Carlin Dunne set a superb 10’00.694 time up the mountain on his Lightning Motorcycles electric superbike, besting the top gas-bike time of the day, a 10’21.323 that was set by Bruno Langlois on his 1205cc class Ducati Multistrada 1200 S.

Setting the fastest time ever for an electric motorcycle up Pikes Peak, Dunne likely would have broken his own outright record had the PPIHC race course not been extremely green after two days of intermittent downpours.

Describing the course as having very little traction, compared to the earlier practice days, Dunne cited at least a dozen spots where he could have improved upon his time, but also acknowledged that one of those twelve areas likely would have been his stopping point for the day, as was the case for a bevy of other competitors.

The first major motorsport event to see an electric motorcycle out perform its gas counterparts, the 91st running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb will surely be remembered as a turning-point for the historic race, and also for motorsport in general.

We suspect it won’t be long before electrics dominate both the car and motorcycle ranks at the Race to the Cloud, and hold the outright record in each field (though, Sebastian Loeb’s 8’13.878 may take a while to crack). You can count on seeing more electric motorcycle brands in the coming years.

Asphalt & Rubber wants to send a shout out up the mountain to our boy Carlin for another 10/10ths ride to the summit of Pikes Peak, and we tip our hat to Richard Hatfield and the Lightning Motorcycles crew, for they truly are the Top Bananas at the Mountain today.

A&R also offers our best thoughts and wishes for a speedy recovery to the plethora of riders who went off the race course today. Many of them got back up and finished their race, which is an astounding feat in its own right, however several racers had to be medically transported down the mountain.