Robin Shute in the SendyCar: the unknown British driver quietly setting new records
Why Britain’s little-known Pikes Peak hero blew Meaden’s mind on the mountain
As evo readers it’s a safe bet you know of Pikes Peak. Made famous back in the ’80s by Ari Vatanen’s one-handed heroics behind the wheel of his Peugeot 405 T16 in the glorious short film, Climbdance, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb is the toughest, most singular and most captivating challenge in motorsport.
Look back through the roster of winners and unsurprisingly most are American. None more successful than the legendary Unser dynasty, who have competed at Pikes Peak since 1926 and accrued a remarkable 27 overall wins. Then there’s Vatanen, Röhrl and Mouton from the days when rallying’s banned Group B cars came to Colorado and upset the locals. Ultra-committed Kiwi, Rod Millen, and Japan’s Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima are two more high-altitude heroes.
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More recently, endurance racing legend Romain Dumas has won the PPIHC no fewer than six times, the last being just a few weeks ago in the electric Ford Mustang Mach‑E. His 2018 win in the VW ID.R set a new all-time mountain record of 7min 57sec, making him the first and so far only driver to dip under the eight-minute barrier. Sébastien Loeb is another famous European to conquer the mountain, his winning run in Peugeot’s 208 T16 standing as one of the great drives on the mountain.
Given the above, you might think a four-time overall winner, the only British driver to have won the PPIHC and the man who set a new rear-wheel-drive record (using a combustion engine at that!) might be a name we’re familiar with. Yet I doubt many of you have heard of Robin Shute.
It’s impossible to do justice to Shute, his latest car, or his numerous Pikes Peak achievements with words. Better you take yourself to YouTube, type ‘Robin Shute sets the RWD Record’ into the search bar and prepare to have your mind blown. Suffice to say, the car he has spent the last three years building – the SendyCar V1 – is a truly sensational and fascinating machine. Built around the central carbon tub of a Tatuus Formula 4 car, pretty much everything attached to it is bespoke. The engine is a turbocharged 2.3-litre V8 effectively formed from a pair of conjoined BMW S1000RR superbike engines. Revving to 13,000rpm it’s good for 850bhp at sea level and high 700s in the thin mountain air. The car weighs 589kg excluding fuel and driver and is still accelerating at a force of 2 g beyond 100mph.
The aerodynamics – designed by Shute – are so effective they generate more than the car’s weight from just 59mph. That’s amazing considering how much thinner the air is at Pikes Peak altitudes: 1.7 miles above sea level at the start, climbing to 2.6 miles at the summit. But then such wizardry shouldn’t come as a surprise, given Robin is the son of Tony Shute, Lotus alumni and one of the key engineers responsible for the Elise S1.
Driving a really fast car as fast as you can up Pikes Peak is a ridiculous endeavour. One that I was lucky (and foolish) enough to try twice, back in 2007 and 2008. The car I drove was a Wells Coyote. Built around an old IndyCar tub and gearbox and fitted with barn door-sized wings, it was powered by a 6.6-litre methanol-burning Chevy V8 producing 750bhp. The car weighed less than 800kg.
The course was half paved and half loose back then. I’m pleased I managed to experience it like that, because the mixed surface added yet another dimension to the challenge. It also suited my liking for sliding a car around, though it did mean running on knobbly rear tyres – wonderfully named Goodyear Pikes Peak Blue Streak Specials – with road tyres on the front. The rears hated the paved sections but felt fabulous on the dirt. In hindsight I was probably enjoying myself a little too much. Had I known I was less than 6sec off the eventual second-place finisher in my class I might have reined it in a fraction. Not that I’m complaining; third place in Open Wheel Division and sixth overall will always be the best thing I’ll ever achieve in a car.
Shute’s record-setting run on what looked like a lethally bumpy course is very different biscuits ‘n’ gravy. Amazingly, given the result, it was not without mechanical issues, a dodgy rear-wheel speed sensor triggering a performance-limiting chain of events. Still Shute managed a time of 8:29.497, good enough to win the Super Unlimited class, set a new rear-drive record and finish second overall, 11sec behind Romain Dumas in the 1400bhp electric all-wheel-drive Unlimited Production-class Ford.
Racing is littered with tales of what might have been, but the combination of a fully fit SendyCar and fully lit Shute is surely capable of overall victory and a new outright record. As ever with Pikes Peak, the mountain decides, but I’d sure love to be there to witness him try next year.
This story was first featured in evo issue 348.
