It’s a race that defies logic – an old Nevada mining town straight out of a Sergio Leone Western flick, a wild cast of characters, German supercars, Italian exotics, home-brewed racers, vintage muscle cars and even a few helicopter cameraships – all racing up a 5.2 mile mountain road with 500-foot drop-offs and no guard rails. The 2011 Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge hill climb, held in Virginia City, Nevada (aka the Nürburgring of Nevada) is in the record books, logging 48 drivers, 391 runs and five new members of the exclusive Spectre 3:41 Club. It was a wild success.





Lou Gigliotti of Wylie, Texas, came to the hill with a title to defend and like any good gunslinger, he fired first and drove his LG Motorsports 2010 ZR1 to the overall event win, pushing the supercar to a best lap time of 3:14, 7.3 seconds faster than his race-winning run last year! Local driver Duck Fuson drove his radical 2,300 pound 911 Turbo to a 3:15.2, right on Gigliotti’s heels. The final spot on the podium went to Jeff Rosen in a 2011 Porsche 911 GT3 RS, who ran 3:22.2. Local hero Jeremy Kappus drove to a fourth place finish with a 3:24.2 run in his daily driver Lancer Evo IX.





Other notable entries include RJ Gottlieb, driving his world-famous “Big Red” 1969 Camaro race car that won the Silver State Challenge to a 3:29.99 run up the hill while being chased by a helicopter. Dan Weishaar, who drove his 1968 Plymouth Road Runner from Yuma Arizona, to Virginia City, made over a dozen runs up the hill and then drove home. On the opposite end of the scale (literally), Thomas Berndt, who was a corner worker in 2010, came back for the 2nd running of the race with his home-built Toyota MR2 and outran quite a few of the big-bore sports cars. Competitor Kevin Wesley managed to squeeze a 3:39.9 second run out of a brand new 2011 Dodge Challenger 392 automatic, earning a spot in the 3:41 Club and making him the fastest competitor on the hill in an unmodified vehicle.



“We made 391 runs up a very fast and twisty mountain road - 5.2 miles at a time - with no guardrails and steep drop offs,” said Spectre Performance President and current 341 record holder Amir Rosenbaum. “That's over 2,000 miles at a very high rate of speed. That's almost coast to coast on a narrow twisty road at high speed! With only one minor crunchlet and four minor breakdowns out of almost 400 runs, the 2011 Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge was truly epic. We proved that you can get a large group of drivers to be very focused and very careful and very safe and very very FAST. Next year will be even faster.”



Due to the success of the 2011 event, dates for The Third Annual Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge are set for June 15 - 17, 2012. Mark your calendars.