Romain Dumas drove the Super Mustang Mach-E to overall victory at the 104th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, reaching the 14,115-foot summit in 8:18.202 and claiming his sixth King of the Mountain title. The result delivered Ford Racing its second overall Pikes Peak victory and won the new Unlimited – Production Based class created for extreme competition vehicles that retain a connection to a production model.
The time sits roughly four and a half seconds off the absolute second-fastest Pikes Peak run in history, the 8:13.878 set by Sébastien Loeb in 2013 driving the Peugeot 208 T16. Dumas made the sub-eight-minute run first in 2018, driving Volkswagen’s ID.R to a 7:57.148. A year before this victory, Dumas had been dethroned by Italian Simone Faggioli in a race shortened due to weather.
The Super Mustang Mach-E uses three STARD UHP 6-Phase motors producing more than 1,400 horsepower across all four wheels. A 50 kWh battery supports up to 710 kW of regenerative braking. Pirelli supplied the tires. Ford Racing cited up to 12,000 pounds of downforce available at speed, making the demonstrator the highest-downforce vehicle tested in Ford’s new rolling road wind tunnel. Nick Kuhajda, Program Supervisor for Ford Racing Demonstrators, noted that understanding aerodynamic performance and balance was critical to giving Dumas confidence on the mountain.
That performance had to remain usable across a 12.42-mile course containing 156 turns and 4,725 feet of elevation gain. As the car climbs, decreasing air density reduces aerodynamic effectiveness. Electric motors deliver the same power at 14,115 feet as at the start line, the advantage that has driven EV dominance at Pikes Peak in recent years.
Ford Racing returned with the same car that competed on the weather-shortened 2025 course, spending the intervening year on refinement. Engineers scanned the car and compared it with its original CAD data, measured its center of gravity and moments of inertia, and completed kinematics and compliance testing. The findings guided improvements to steering precision, roll stiffness, suspension geometry, and friction within the suspension system. The team characterized the car’s five-way-adjustable dampers and used 7-post and 8-post rigs to reproduce wheel movement and the loads generated by the aerodynamic package.
Dumas worked alongside engineers in Ford Racing’s driver-in-the-loop simulator, while virtual drivers completed thousands of simulated Pikes Peak runs to optimize the setup. Underbody pressure-tap testing helped correlate physical airflow measurements with computational fluid dynamics predictions before final track and wind-tunnel validation.
The Super Mustang Mach-E carried No. 125 in recognition of Ford’s 125 years of racing. Ford entries participated in the inaugural Pikes Peak Hill Climb in 1916, beginning a connection to the mountain that now spans 110 years. The victory arrived as Ford Racing prepares for its 2027 FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar program, with the Super Mustang Mach-E serving as both a technical demonstrator and a development tool for the upcoming campaign.
Source: Ford. Images courtesy of Ford.
