quattro Magazine Feature: Sighting Speed

Words by Aaron Plante

Rookie Rob Wilmoth took a grassroots RS 3 to the summit. It required nine people, three weeks at altitude, several elegant engineering solutions and one heater at max. Mostly, though, it required good sense.

After 12 minutes, 19.508 seconds of turbocharged climbing, Rob Wilmoth crossed the finish line at the summit of Pikes Peak and had one thought: “Oh my God, this just happened!”

Then he went looking for his doughnut.

The summit doughnut is one of those Pikes Peak traditions that sounds patently ridiculous anywhere below 14,115 feet. A driver spends a week pacing in the middle of the night, rehearsing 156 turns, negotiating weather that changes whenever it gets bored, and trying not to launch themselves off the peak. Reach the top and somebody hands you fried dough.

Except they had run out.

This was, Wilmoth jokes, the devastating part of an otherwise successful rookie campaign. The car, the man, and the team finished, but not before the pastries did.

Wilmoth finished 11th in Time Attack 1 and 57th overall in his 2018 Audi RS 3. Wilmoth qualified 64th, moved forward on race day, and reached the summit on his first attempt. That is something plenty of faster, better funded and more experienced people have failed to do.

“I finished 57th and felt like I won,” he said. At the top, the other drivers treated him as if he had. Down at the start line, his crew celebrated in kind.

That crew’s victory was deserved since the results sheet counts the driver, the car and the clock, but never the people who got all three up the mountain. It makes for clean record-keeping but tends to forget the team. Wilmoth, however, did not.

At Friday’s Fan Fest, we met Wilmoth beside his RS 3. He took a swig of water and submitted to the recorder. Asked why he tried Pikes Peak, he pointed toward the white Mustang Ryan Cheek was piloting for this year’s race. “This is pretty much her fault,” he noted. The rest of the blame belongs to our own Executive Director, Chris May.

Wilmoth is an Audi Club Carolinas member with an SCCA competition license, Time Attack wins, and Appalachian Hill Climb Series experience. He bought the Audi new from Flow Audi in Winston-Salem. Its 1,000th mile arrived at Virginia International Raceway, where the break-in procedure consisted of completing the required mileage, changing the oil, and abandoning restraint.

None of this on its own made Wilmoth an obvious Pikes Peak entrant. Cheek, his Racing for ALS teammate and a veteran of the mountain, provided encouragement. May supplied something less delicate, even in jest.

“Why are you not doing this?” May asked.

Wilmoth mentioned the expense.

“You make poor financial decisions all the time.”

To see this story and more, click here to access the Q1_2027 digital issue of quattro Magazine.