Pikes Peak rewind: Bobby Unser’s Audi-taming final King of the Mountain

It’s 40 years since Pikes Peak International Hill Climb legend Bobby Unser earned his 10th and final King of the Mountain title in 1986 (main image).

Some 18 years after his ninth overall win on the storied Colorado 14er, and four years after calling time on a racing career that included three Indy 500 victories, “Uncle Bobby” parlayed some run-of-the-mill (for him, anyway) record-breaking with Audi at Talladega Speedway into another attempt on the race that had built so much of the Unser family legend.       

Audi had dipped its all-wheel-drive toes in the Pikes Peak waters in 1982 and ’83 with American John Buffum, who won the Rally Class in his Group Quattro on his second attempt. But recognizing the marketing gold of a production-based AWD taking on the iconic mountain’s 12.42 miles and 156 turns, and possibly winning, Audi pulled out the stops for 1984, sending the WRC’s most-successful woman driver, Michele Mouton, and her co-driver Fabrizia Pons, in a full-factory Quattro A2.

Mouton treated the hill climb just as they would a WRC special stage, with Pons calling pace notes for the French driver. Despite a minor engine issue on race day that sapped the A2’s power at key stages on the run, the duo won the Open Rally class and finished second overall behind Bill Brister’s purpose-built Wells Coyote.

A year later, Audi was back, but several levels up on the intensity scale. For starters, Audi Sport tech guru Roland Gumpert decided Mouton would go solo in a quest to shed any kilos he could. For seconds, free of the restrictions of Gp. B, the team brought the Audi Sport quattro S1, with its shorter wheelbase, large rear wing, composite body panels, and a turbocharger set up to help deal with the power-sapping altitude.

Despite being copped for speeding in the pre-start area during practice, and being forced to start her run from a standing, rather than a flying start, Mouton shattered the hill record on race day.

The S1 completed the run in 11m25.390s, beating Al Unser Jr’s 1983 record run by almost 13 seconds. It was the first overall win for a woman – a feat still to be equaled some 40 years later – and the first for a non-American driver.  

But having accomplished it, Mouton was done with Pikes Peak – and with Audi, too. She switched to a Peugeot rally program in 1986, but is adamant that she wouldn’t have returned to the mountain even if she’d stayed, such was the attitude and hassle she’d encountered in her winning year.

But Audi wanted to go for it again, this time with an even more extreme Sport Quattro, the SL, and Bobby Unser was only too willing to step in and take back the crown from this upstart young lady, and a foreigner to boot... Heck, if he could take back the overall record for the Unser dynasty, even better.

Audi was taking its Pikes Peak challenge to a whole new level with the Quattro SL…and Bobby Unser wanted in when the wraps came off.

Plus, Unser’s ninth win, back in 1968, had put him equal with his Uncle Louis’ tally. Family’s family, but the chance to move clear on the King of the Mountains roll of honor was too good an opportunity to miss.

Audi had lined up two-time WRC champ Walter Rohrl for the 1986 attempt, but Unser had played hardball. After setting those closed-course speed records at Talladega with an Audi 5000 CS Quattro luxury sedan, Unser refused to allow his name and likeness to be used in any publicity for the achievement unless he was given the Pikes Peak gig.

Talking to RACER’s North American editor, Marshall Pruett, in 2018 (CLICK HERE for full interview), the late, great Unser recalled putting his demands to Audi…and getting his way.

"Something inside me told me, 'Goddamnit, just let me have that mountain again with a good car, and I can win again,' Unser recalled. "[Ferdinand] Piech, the chairman of the board of Audi, Porsche, all the companies, he didn't want to give in to Bobby Unser instead of Walter Rohrl; that was his hero," Unser recalled. "At Pikes Peak, well, I played hardball.

"See, when I did Talladega, I never signed a [media] release. I never signed anything. I never even verbally told them anything. It was all, 'I'll see if the car is good. I'll see if it's safe.' That type of thing, you know. And then I got them a whole bunch of world records.

"So I just nicely told them, ‘If you want to advertise [the achievements at] Talladega, you're gonna have to do Pikes Peak with me. Walter Rohrl can go next year.’ And so they finally gave in. That's how I got my ride in the Audi deal,"

The SL was an S1 on steroids. Huge front splitter, massive rear wing, almost 500hp even at Pikes Peak altitude, but with twitchy handling and hand-grenade power delivery that made it a beast to drive. Not that it fazed Unser, who relished the chance to play with the complexities of torque splits, endless suspension options and high-altitude forced induction.

"[It had] a turbocharger that never shuts off," said Unser. “I flip a little dinky-ass [switch] – like an aircraft off and on switch – and that turbo boost…wham! 3.6 or 3.8 bar. There's a ton of horsepower. Now I'm gonna put it in gear and go. And it never shuts off till I shut that switch off. It'd burn itself up if I left that switch on, you know?”

For Unser, the way the power came in made the car almost undrivable. He recommended a switch from a single throttle body to a pair of smaller ones, maintaining the air flow but giving him more throttle control. It was classic Unser tinkering, but as he dialed the car in, running through multiple torque-split settings and suspension tweaks, as well as finally getting his way on switching from a limited-slip front differential to an open one (and experiencing his first high-speed spin on the mountain…), any lingering thoughts that this brash American had hijacked Rohrl’s ride had vanished. 

Bobby Unser knew what he wanted from his fearsome Quattro SL, earning the respect of the Audi enginers.

"Those [Audi] guys, by then, they had decided that, man, this cat, everything he asks for worked,” recalled Unser. “Now that everything's working pretty good with this American guy, they became friendly; behind me, instead of fighting me and wishing Walter Rohrl was there. You can't believe some of the things that I did to that race car to make it better."

Conclusive proof came on race day, when Unser’s spectacular 11m09.220s ascent beat Mouton’s 1985 time by 16 seconds. The record was back with Pikes Peak’s first family and Bobby headed back to “Unserville” in Albuquerque, New Mexico, mission accomplished.

The following year, Rohrl finally got his Pikes Peak chance. And with Gp. B now banned in the WRC, Audi could concentrate all its efforts on making the SL an even more fearsome Pikes Peak weapon for 1987. The E2 Pikes Peak featured a double-deck rear wing, a full-on wing above the hefty front spoiler, revamped suspension and at least 750hp of light-switch power on tap (although legend has it that Rohrl could dial up closer to a thousand).

But something wasn’t quite connecting between Rohrl and his outlandish Audi, and with Peugeot sending three of its 205 T16s to Colorado, complete with Audi-style aero packages and a stacked driver lineup headed by 1981 WRC champ Ari Vatanen, and Malcolm Wilson adding more factory firepower in a Gp. B Ford RS200, it didn’t look like it would be a stroll for the German.

Sure enough, Unser got the call to head to Colorado and give his take on what wasn’t working.

"I get up there and I watched Rohrl the next morning," Unser recalled to Pruett. "That poor guy is just not on that road the right way. He's driving it like you see in the movies when he's doing these rally races. And that's all fine and dandy, but it isn't going to work up there.”

While not wanting to embarrass the WRC ace, Unser was asked by Audi’s North American motorsports boss to give his take on what would work, and duly did…

"I told the engineer and the mechanics, 'Look, let's take the setup that I had when I ran it last year.' And I said, 'I know it looks wacky, but for the hell of it, just make it the same way.' And that was enough of the talk, and they did that.

"And then I got Walter aside, and I told him, 'You know you can't run Pikes Peak like a rally race.' I say, 'When you see me pitching into the turns, look at the movies. They made him watch movies and movies and movies of Bobby running the course. Which they had from helicopters and everything else. And so I say, 'You've really got to run it that way. I've tried every kind of way there is, and that's the only way it will work.'

"And you know what that son of a b**** did? The very next morning, he copied my words to the nth degree. And set fast time for that practice. So the guy is freaking good. All I had to do was tell him, do it this way. I wanted to see if he could do it. Well of course he could do it. He's a good race driver."

The E2 Pikes Peak duly completed its race day run in 10m47.850s – a new record, of course, but even more significant for being the first sub-11-minute run up the mountain.

Walter Rohrl’s one-off Pikes Peak attempt with Audi in 1987 – “Uncle Bobby” coaching included – shattered the record with a first sub-11-minute ascent.

With that, Rohrl was done with Pikes Peak, and so was Audi. Instead, the German marque turned its attention to Trans-Am, with its 200 Quattros now demonstrating AWD prowess on asphalt.

That was it for Bobby Unser, too – a last win behind the wheel in 1986 and, as he tells it, the Unser expertise unlocking the mountain for Rohrl’s “won and done” Pikes Peak dalliance.

"I never billed [Hoppen] for that," said Unser. "But they needed me bad. Once I showed up everything changed. It all went my way. He set fast time. 

"But it was so interesting getting these foreigners that came over there. They found out the goddamned dumb Americans can figure that stuff out too. It was fun.”

And as a footnote, that wasn’t the end of the Unsers’ winning ways on the mountain. Bobby’s son, Robby, would earn four King of the Mountain titles between 1989 and 2004, making it an incredible 26 overall wins for Pikes Peak’s first family.

Who’ll be on top of the world in 2026? RACER Network will bring live coverage of the Race to the Clouds to viewers across the world. Pikes Peak Live, presented by Mobil 1, coverage begins at 9:00am ET/7:00 a.m. MT on Sunday, June 21.

Fans worldwide can also stream the race live on RACER+, free with email registration, ensuring motorsports enthusiasts everywhere can experience one of the world’s most challenging and iconic competitions in real time. 

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