Faggioli wins with Dumas and the Ford Super Mustang Mach-E second
All five drivers running Pirelli P Zero tyres made a clean sweep of the top five places in the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb 2025. First overall in “the Race to the Clouds” was Simone Faggioli, the multiple Italian and European hill climb champion and long-standing Pirelli partner, at the wheel of the Norma M20 FC (also known as the Nova Proto NP01 Bardahl) in the Unlimited category—the event’s premier class. Second overall and winner of the Pikes Peak Open Class was Romain Dumas, driving the Ford Super Mustang Mach-E. The times were impressive: Faggioli finished in 3:37.196, while Dumas posted a time of 3:42.252. In third was another Italian, Diego Degasperi, also in a Norma M20 FC, followed by Americans Dan Novembre and David Donner in a Wolf GB08S TC Special and Wolf Aurobay GB08, respectively.
The dominance of the top two, both seasoned hill climb experts, was evident from qualifying, where they set the pace, finishing in the same order as the race and leaving their rivals several seconds behind on the challenging 19.93-kilometre course, featuring 156 turns and a 1,440-metre elevation change.
"We know Simone very well and were quite confident about how he would perform. Congratulations also to Diego, who reaffirms the supremacy of the Italian school, as well as to their closest rivals. Races like these demand experience, nerves of steel, and a meticulously fine-tuned car set-up, to which our technicians contributed by optimising tyre-car interaction. The rest was down to the Hill Climb soft version of our P Zero," commented Terenzio Testoni, Rally Activity Manager and Hill Climb Racing Coordinator.
"This is our second year working with Ford in this type of racing, and we didn’t have to wait long to see results. In 2023, we equipped the Ford Supervan 4.2, which shattered the Open class record, while last year, we supplied tyres for another exceptional vehicle, the Ford F-150 Lightning Super Truck, which won its category. Now, we’ve done it again with an even more prestigious result and an equally extraordinary car, albeit of a different type, proving the versatility of our product across diverse tracks and vehicles," affirmed Matteo Braga, Circuit Activity Manager, in charge of the collaboration with Ford.
This year’s one-two finish adds to Pirelli’s already illustrious record at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. In the previous edition, Pirelli tyres propelled the F-150, driven by France’s Dumas, to a class win, while in 2019, the overall victory went to Robin Shute in the Honda turbo-powered Wolf GB08 prototype. That same year, P Zero tyres led the Bentley Continental GT to victory and a production car class record, while in 2018, they supported the Bentley Bentayga in setting a new benchmark for SUVs. That record was later broken in 2022 by the Pirelli P Zero-equipped Lamborghini Urus Performante.
