Layne Schranz Takes Home Class Win at PPIHC

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is always an exciting event to behold. The first time I found myself in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the annual event is held, was when I was a young boy. One night I was relaxing in the hotel room and I vividly remember watching news coverage of the event and being mesmerized by it. That was all she wrote. Hairpin corners lacking guard rails taken at speed by racing drivers in high horsepower hill climb specific machines will always make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

The track has changed over the years as more and more of the tracks surface has been paved. Some feel that the spirit of the event is tarnished as a result, as racers no longer have to exhibit versatile handling techniques driving on a combination of dirt and asphalt. Despite all of that, one thing is for sure: drivers can now set their cars up for tarmac and rip off some amazing time trial runs in their machines.







Take PPIHC competitor Laync Schranz and his "Pikes Peak Open" class 2015 Chevrolet SS hill climb car for example. This year Layne's car benefited from an upgrade in engine management to a Holley Dominator EFI unit. While having the ability to control anything and everything on your engine is great, it means nothing if you can't present all of that information to the driver in an clear and concise fashion. Schranz keeps tabs on air fuel ratios, RPM and other vital engine information with a Holley EFI Digital Dash installed front and center in the cockpit.




"In 2015 our GEICO Racing Pikes Peak Hill Climb team embarked on a journey to not only win the race but also break the extremely difficult and illusive 10 minute barrier on Americas Mountain. Our first major step was to change from our Holley Carburetor to Holley EFI," Layne reports. We used Dave Cho at Colorado Speed and Chassis to install and tune the EFI. We saw immediate performance improvement and much better drivability with the 156 turns twisting up the mountain with an elevation change of almost 5000’. Unfortunately a mechanical problem ended our hopes. We came back with even more passion in 2016 to win and beat 10 minutes in the 100th Anniversary of the Race to the Clouds. We were able to achieve that goal and know that the Holley EFI was a huge part of that accomplishment."

2016 has been a turnaround year for the team however, as the team took the Pikes Peak Open class win this year, completing the hill climb in a staggering 9:53:071! During the course of the climb Schranz was able to build himself more than 11 seconds of gap between he and the second place Open Class finisher Jonathan Frost competing in a 2016 Palatov D2RS Roadster.




While the lap is impressive to watch, I still find myself laughing at Geico the gecko's legs swinging left and right from all the g-forces generated on the circuit.