Video: The 1957 Pikes Peak Hill Climb

Here’s some awesome racing action from 1957 featuring some guys you may have heard of: the Unsers.

 

 

The annual Pikes Peak Hill Climb near Colorado Springs, Colorado, is one of the oldest continually operating motorsports events in the world. The Race to the Clouds, as they like to call it, has run there since 1916. The 12-mile-plus course provides a number of unique challenges, not the least of which is the extreme change in altitude as the cars hurtle up the mountain. The starting line is around 9,390 feet above sea level, while the finish line at the summit is at 14,115 feet. Hence the popularity of supercharging and turbocharging to feed the engines more much-needed oxygen.

This 1957 film, titled No Margin for Error and apparently (we’re guessing from the product placement) produced for Mobil Oil, provides some neat behind-the-scenes stuff and great on-track action, too. The narrationĀ  features a very familiar name at Pikes Peak: Unser. So many members of the Albuquerque, New Mexico family have raced and won here that sportswriters took to calling it “Unser’s Mountain.” Bobby Unser finished third in the championship category in ’57 while the popular stock car class was won by Jerry Unser Jr, brother of Louis, Bobby, and Al Sr. The oldest of the Unser brothers, Jerry was the 1957 USAC stock car champion and the first of the racing Unsers to drive at Indianapolis, but unfortunately he was fatally injured in a qualifying crash at the Speedway in 1959. But at Pikes Peak in ’57, Jerry Unser was on top of the world. Video below.

 

One thought on “Video: The 1957 Pikes Peak Hill Climb

  1. I would really like to see a biography of Louis Unser. He was a skilled engine builder and mechanic and deserves more fame.

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