A track measuring 12.42 miles, featuring 156 turns, rising 4720ft to a heady altitude of 14,110ft… Like the Nürburgring Nordschleife and the Isle of Man TT course, the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in the mountains of Colorado remains a welcome exception to the rule that modern motorsport is sanitised.

This weekend, the 97th ‘Race to the Clouds’ will herald the usual varied roster of all-comers, including among them one who aims to become the first Brit to conquer Pikes Peak since its first running way back in 1916.

Norfolk-born circuit racer Robin Shute is the son of long-time Lotus employee Tony Shute. A US resident since 2011, he first headed to Pikes Peak with Faraday in 2017, but when the electric start-up chose not to return Shute made his own way to Colorado. This year he’s brimming with confidence that a landmark overall victory could be his for the taking.

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“Last year when Faraday pulled out the group of people who had been working on it still wanted to go, so we purchased a car from Canada and went about modifying it for the hill,” explains Shute. “We have a couple of key partners and sponsors, but the premise is it’s a group of friends working on a car out of a home garage. It’s not a professional team, but we are all professionals in automotive industries.”

There’s no all-electric Volkswagen ID R this year to blitz the course record, which stands at a staggering 7min 57.1sec thanks to Romain Dumas’s 2018 effort. But Shute reckons his modded prototype has records of its own to grasp below the 8min 30sec mark, along with a historic overall victory.

He runs a Wolf GB08, powered by an HPD Honda Racing four-cylinder 2.0-litre engine fitted with a Borg Warner turbo, all good for 600bhp (at least on the start line). Capable of a gear-limited 162mph on sticky Pirelli rubber and weighing in at just 518kgs, this is some weapon for a narrow, often slippery mountain road, defined by sheer drops that leave no room for error.