Bentley back to Pikes Peak with monster GT3

With a monstrous new Continental that would make even the most softened of purists spill their Earl Grey, Bentley will return to the Pikes Peak hill climb to bid for a third speed title.

Bentley is no stranger to the Colorado mountain event, having claimed an SUV record with a Bentayga in 2018, and then a production car record with a Continental GT in 2019. Keen to go one further for its hat-trick, the Crewe marque has worked with M-Sport to create this GT3 on steroids in order to take on the Time Attack 1 class – that’s class two, one behind the top-flight Unlimited section for anybody unfamiliar with Pikes Peak lingo.

It’s based on a Continental GT3, but there’s no longer much ‘GT3’ about it given the 4-litre twin-turbo V8 has been tuned to run on biofuel and is likely to produce far beyond the strict 550bhp the GT3 has. And then there’s the huge rear wing, diffuser and alien twinplane front splitter that wouldn’t look out of place in an IKEA shelving catalogue.

Pikes Peak regular Rhys Millen, who secured Bentley’s recent successes, will drive the car for the attempt on June 27. It needs to better the 9min 36.559sec of David Donner’s Porsche 911 GT2 RS Clubsport from 2020.