There is no denying that June is my favorite month of the year. May is a pretty cool month for racing…but here in Colorado, June is even better! We are just a few weeks away from the 89th Running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

This past weekend was the Official Tire Test weekend on the peak. There were 12 cars and about 25 motorcycles that participated in the test. It was so great to see all of the familiar faces and catch up with the other drivers about what they’ve been up to the past eleven months.

Race day is sure to be exciting this year. Paul Dallenbach will be racing his car in Unlimited again this year…it only has about 1,100 more horsepower than our MINI does! There are several other drivers entered in the Unlimited class that are not going to go down without a fight. The Time Attack class has also had immense growth this season.

The test weekend went really well. It felt so good to be back in the car with Rebecca Greek on the mountain. Rebecca is such a talented navigator and I’m so very excited to be working with her once again this year. There is just about two and a half miles of dirt left of the Peak this year. Though there isn’t much dirt left, it was still a big part of the weekend. The highway is getting ready to have the last stretch paved, so the dirt was very different than it was last year. It was a lot more “slippy”. It gave me a good chance to practice my new rally skills that I learned at DirtFish Rally School this past spring!

The Federal Tires did arrive in the states just in time for the weekend! They arrived into California on Tuesday and we had them shipped overnight to Colorado so we could test them on Thursday. What great tires!! After testing them at Pikes Peak International Raceway I was really looking forward to running the tires on the Peak. They have lots of grip to them! The team was very pleased with the tire performance and we are looking forward to race week!

In the next couple of weeks we will be making final changes to the car. In additional to mechanical preperations, I’ll continue my physical and mental training off the track. Next week I will be attending and speaking at the Accredited Members Micro-Cap Investment Conference at the Hyatt Denver Tech Center.