Jeff Zwart's Pikes Peak Diary – Winter is coming

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is the second-oldest motorsports event in America. First contested in 1916, this weekend marks the 93rd running of the "Race to the Clouds."

Accomplished Porsche racer, photographer, commercial director and RACER co-founder Jeff Zwart is a seven-time class winner in this unique race, run on a 12.42-mile course with 156 turns that begins at 9,390ft and finishes at the 14,115ft summit of "America's Mountain." He returns there this year with a Porsche GT3 Turbo Cup to run in the Time Attack 1 class. -Ed.

I have run the Pikes Peak International Hill climb 16 times in 10 different Porsches. This year I had planned to take my GT3 Turbo Cup that I had run the last two years. We prepped the car and shook it down at Willow Springs with the help of Patrick Long. Everything was looking good to make our trip to Pikes Peak for the initial practice week. But suddenly the weather was the big news and it seemed to be winter all over again up on the peak.

The snow came in and kept dumping and dumping. When I arrived to test I had never seen anything like it. Some of the snow banks were 15 feet high. The road and surged and shrunk under the snow heaves that made the top all the more difficult. The mountain had taken a beating and the beating was still evident.

Testing began a bit tentative, as the daily melting snow would turn to ice in the turns during the night. Rolling our Porsche off the trailer was a welcome sight as the sunrise lurked in the background. Once I heard that motor fire to life and watched as the BBI Autosport boys began to work there magic, I was ready to race up this frozen snow shrouded mountain.

As the light came up we really were surrounded by a winter wonderland. The ribbon of road was relatively dry and ice free so my first run was in the bag and I was ready to start putting some times down and see where we would land after a year of anticipation.

This car is a hybrid of what I ran in 2010, which were a GT3 Cup and the car I ran in 2011 which was a GT2 RS. To combat the altitude we mated the Turbo motor with the best handling, sequencial gearbox equipped chassis of the GT3. It has been an epic car to drive over the last couple years, but race day results had not reflected the true potential of this BBI built and prepped Pikes Peak car.

Its feeling good now that the sun is up and couple days are down, we are getting closer to the goal of getting to the summit this coming Sunday.