Watch David Donohue’s Porsche 911 Turbo Attack The Pikes Peak Hillclimb From Inside The Car
The car’s full officially unofficial name is the “911 Turbo S GT3R America Cup”
David Donohue is a legend in the Porsche community. Son of the famed Mark Donohue, championship winning racer in his own right, and most recently Porsche's go-between for 918 Spyder owners, David has been racing for a couple of decades and shows no signs of slowing down. For 2017 he wanted a new challenge and decided to take on the mighty Pikes Peak hillclimb in a heavily modified 2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S. Because the car carries parts from the 911 GT3R, the 911 GT America, and the 911 GT3 Cup, they decided to slap the tongue-in-cheek name badge of "911 Turbo S GT3R America Cup" on the back of the car.
For still having his Rookie stripe at Pikes Peak, Donohue did a hell of a job racing up the hill. In this car that came down an assembly line and was available for sale at a Porsche dealership, Donohue placed 6th overall out of 80 competitors. His final time of 9:49.954 was good enough for second in the Time Attack 1 class just 2 seconds behind PPIHC veteran & legend Rhys Millen. He finished just a few fractions of a second behind a nearly-200-horsepower KTM race motorcycle. All of that is pretty astonishing for a guy who has never raced up to the peak before.
If you're interested in what a 991 Turbo with some serious aerodynamic modifications is like to drive up the winding road in Colorado, here is the onboard video from David's full sub-10-minute run. Looking at the split times, Rhys Millen was much faster than David in the lower sections of the mountain, but as the elevation increased, David clawed back a bunch of time. It's unclear what it was that helped him gain that much speed, but perhaps it was just confidence in the car and the road and himself. Either way, well done Donohue, and we hope to see you back at the mountain next year! Maybe in a GT2 RS?