Romain Dumas treats Pikes Peak like his private driveway, and his 2026 run was a reminder of how committed the talented Frenchman is. He took the overall win in the 104th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in the Super Mustang Mach-E. In the process he collected his sixth King of the Mountain crown. This was Ford’s second overall Pikes Peak victory, delivered in the year it marks 125 years in competition.
Driving Pikes Peak is always a great privilege. We know how risky the race is, how dangerous the race is and how we always are playing with the limits. I’m really, really happy about this win. We were matching our simulation time or even possibly better, so we squeezed everything out. The car was great
– Romain Dumas
Built for altitude
The Super Mustang Mach-E is not a road car with race stickers and a publicity budget. It is a purpose-built electric demonstrator developed with Stard, shaped to survive one of the harshest tests in motorsport. Three Stard UHP 6-Phase motors drive all four wheels and make more than 1 050 kW. The battery is a 50 kWh unit, and the car can harvest as much as 710 kW through regenerative braking.
That kind of output would be plenty anywhere else. On Pikes Peak, it is only the starting point. The course is 20 km long, rises to over 4 300 metres above sea level after 156 turns. As a car climbs, the air thins, the aero load falls away, and the driver gets less room for error with every switchback. Internal-combustion cars lose performance to altitude. Electric powertrains do not, which is one reason this sort of tech demonstrator makes so much sense here.
Ford Racing leaned hard into the aero side of the project. The Super Mustang Mach-E can generate over 5 000 kg of downforce, a figure that made it the highest-downforce car ever tested in Ford’s new rolling road wind tunnel. That matters on a mountain where grip is won and lost in tiny margins, and where the same corner can arrive with different grip levels, temperature, and wind conditions depending on the moment.
A Return
Ford returned with the car that ran on the shortened 2025 event. The team then spent a year pulling it apart in data and rebuilding it in detail. Scans of the car were compared with the original CAD data. Engineers measured centre of gravity and moments of inertia. Kinematics and compliance testing followed, because suspension geometry is not something you mess with on a road that changes character every few hundred metres.
The results of that work went straight into the parts that matter most when a vehicle is balancing on the edge of adhesion. Steering precision was sharpened. Roll stiffness was revised. Suspension geometry was altered. Friction within the suspension system was reduced.
EV Power
Pikes Peak rewards cars that stay calm under load. The mountain does not care how impressive the spec sheet looks if the suspension cannot keep the tyre contact patches planted. The Super Mustang Mach-E’s electric layout gave Ford an immediate advantage in one area, because altitude does not strip power from an electric motor the way it does from a turbo or naturally aspirated engine. The challenge then shifts to putting that power down cleanly and managing the energy through the climb.
The battery and regenerative braking system helped the car manage heat and energy through the long run, while the aero package kept the platform planted as the air got thinner. Pirelli’s role was critical too, because tyres at Pikes Peak are asked to cope with changing surfaces, fast corners, braking zones, and a constant shift in grip as the road climbs higher and colder.
A sixth win
Dumas collecting his sixth King of the Mountain title is a headline on its own. The new Unlimited Production Based class was created for extreme machines that still carry a connection to a road car, and Dumas won that as well. The result lands in two places at once: as a class victory and as a broader statement about where Ford wants its performance work to go.
There is also the larger Ford-Pikes Peak thread. The company first turned up in the 1916 event, and the mountain has remained in the Ford story ever since. This latest run adds a modern chapter to that history. The badge on the nose may say Mustang, but the real point is what the car represents: a hard-raced electric demonstrator used to push Ford Racing’s EV and hybrid development forward.
Ride onboard with the Frenchman on a trip up the mountain that almost feels as though its playing in fast forward:
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