Respected motorsport outfit BBI Autosport revealed its 'Hoonipigasus' this time last year. The 1 040 kW Porsche-based race car lined up for the 101th running of Pike’s Peak this past weekend with non-other than Lia Block behind the wheel. We take a closer look at the development of this one-off machine.
Words: Wilhelm Lutjeharms
Images: Supplied and GF Williams
“Support your local speedshop” is proudly emblazoned on the cap Betim Berisha is wearing during our interview. This should indicate, at least partly, what is undoubtedly one of his main interests, being the owner of BBI Autosport.
BBI Autosport needs little introduction. This performance and motorsport outfit has been responsible for some impressive successes at the annual Pike’s Peak Hill Climb in the USA. Secondly, these successes have been with a long line-up of modern Porsche race cars. BBI took these cars and rebuilt them into devastating hill climb racers, partly by having a wealth of knowledge of the track and general conditions in the USA’s Pike National Forest in Colorado.
After a few years’ experience, a new idea surfaced. Betim explains: “We were already in discussions with Jo Scarbo of Scarbo Performance. He sort of conceptualised a rear-engined version of this car a while back. Not as wide and not as crazy. As the renderings came through, we approached Hoonigan as they had earlier asked us what we would be doing for the 100th anniversary of Pike’s Peak in 2022. Long story short, we discussed some options and I said I would like Ken Block to drive the car. They said he was interested and we all decided to see what we could put together.”
Sadly the legendary Ken Block passed away earlier this year, which was obviously devastating to this team (and the global motoring fraternity) who was so close to him. However, there is a good end to the story...
That was in November 2021 and after a scarcely believable six months, the car was unveiled in Los Angeles in mid-May 2022 with the hill climb taking place a few weeks later on the 26th of June. Of course, quite a few things had to fall neatly in place for this to have happened in such a short space of time.
“We got this done so quickly because of the dedication of our team and the people working on this project. Everyone was fully committed to it. Verus Engineering was simultaneously developing the aero while Oil Stain Lab was working on the look and feel of the car. Meanwhile, Scarbo and ourselves were discussing and designing the chassis. We were making moulds for carbon fibre parts before the chassis design was even completed.”
“What you don’t see are the electronics and wiring of the car, which is really unbelievable. Before a chassis tube had been cut, Obsidian Engineering was already working on its system.
“Everything had to happen in parallel. While I’m talking to each respective party, we were trying to move everything together and forward. It proved to be a very effective process, but you do need the commitment of everyone. For example, the transmission was being built in France by Sadev, the fuel cell and system in the UK by Premier Fuel Systems and Protec fuel pumps. Wheels were designed in Italy and being cut here in the USA, some of the electronics were coming from Germany and even as far as Australia. All of this was happening simultaneously.”
“I can’t even imagine doing this in a facility geared towards volume production, even though you might have maybe 40 people and many resources at your disposal. The way we did it with the team we have is the only way I believe we could do it.”
One of the interesting bits is the fact that this car is loosely based on a Porsche. “The very base of the car is a 1966 Porsche 912. Joe Scarbo and I bought the car a while back. It now has a chromoly tubular chassis. There is basically nothing left of the original car. From the tubes we have mounts onto which we clip the bodywork. The floors bolt to the bottom of the chassis, and these are made of carbon fibre. There is no dashboard and when you sit in it you can see the front shocks when you look past the steering wheel. The windshield is custom cut as we wanted to make sure there was no gasket or rubber around it so it sits flush with the body.”
“We’ve really set out to build this car with one purpose in mind. Virtually every little piece on this car has multiple functions. One bracket will do six things, for example. We are trying to keep the weight down wherever we can. The instrument display is located inside the steering wheel, there being no other displays in the car.
“One of the trickiest challenges of the project was building a mid-engined, all-wheel drive car.” Betim explains how they managed to achieve this.
“Changing the drivetrain layout from rear-engine, rear drive to mid-engine, all-wheel drive meant we had to accommodate a propshaft from the gearbox, now of course in the rear of the car, to link up the front axle. This meant it had to logically go underneath the engine through the centre of the car. Since raising the engine enough to achieve this negatively affects the centre of gravity, we didn’t want to do this. So we flipped the gearbox upside down, lowered the engine as far as possible and ran the front driveshaft over the flat-six! The front driveshaft also negated our initial idea of a centrally placed driving position, with the encased front driveshaft now running right past the driver’s shoulder.”
As expected, the engine is no standard road-going 911 unit. Taken from a 2016 911 GT3 R racer, the engine was redesigned with new pistons and connecting rods – to name only two notable upgrades. After all, the planned power delivery would be nearly triple what it had when it left the factory.
Secondly, the biggest racing turbochargers that Garett’s racing division has ever created were fitted. Let that sink in a little. There are also no less than three injectors per cylinder and the rev limit is around 9 600 rpm. The result is a twin-turbo 4.0-litre, flat-six engine which, when run on methanol, churns out 1 040 kW at sea level, around 745 kW at the start of the hill climb and around 600 kW at the finish line at 4 302 m above sea level.
However, Betim’s view on the power figure might come as a surprise: “The power figure of this car is really an arbitrary number. What will dictate progress up the hill is how much traction you have and how much mechanical grip you can make. We also have mechanically locking front and rear differentials while exactly 50% of the power goes the front and 50% to the rear. All four corners are fitted with 13-inch wide wheels.”
“The Sadev SL90 six-speed sequential transmission is the same unit that was used in the Hoonicorn, the 1 000 kW AWD Ford Mustang. We’ve also run it in a few other cars and we’ve had great success with this gearbox.”
The car’s GPS-controlled suspension system allows it to alter automatically depending on which part of the track the car finds itself. “Basically the ride height is able to change. You can alter the ride height of the car at any time. Combine this with the GPS and the result is that you can raise the ride height in the front, for example, under heavy braking if the nose dives too much. We’ll do this to not disturb the aerodynamics. The faster the car goes, the more it will suck itself to the ground. Then we’ll counter that with hydraulics to keep the car at a desired height. We do that with six suspension sensors and three lasers all talking to each other.”
“We have the entire mountain track mapped out, so we know where the car will go fast and where it will be slower. There are also many bumpy sections up there, so in those spots we’ll raise the chassis a little bit for additional ground clearance and suspension travel.”
The team has been able to achieve a weight of only 1 000 kg. But just as important will be the downforce figure as the car heads up the mountain with the driver trying to keep the speed as high as possible through the turns.
“At sea level, at 255 km/h, validated by Verus Engineering, the car will generate 2 270 kg of downforce.” Also, how pretty is that small duck tail at the rear underneath that monstrous wing!
The artist and snowboard Olympian Trevor Andrew designed the livery to pay homage to the 1971 Porsche 917/20 “Pink Pig” Le Mans race car, surely one of the most recognisable Porsche race cars ever – and who could miss the Pegusus horse, another connection to Porsche’s racing history.
The team had some technical difficulties last year at the event and had to withdraw. However, at Pike’s Peak Hill Climb this past weekend all eyes were on Lia Block (Ken Block’s daughter), who was running in the (not entirely timed) exhibition class – this year she was honouring her father, making noise up the legendary mountain.
Dmitriy Orlov, BBI Autosport’s technical director explains what the company has done with the car in the past year: “We were able to strip the car down fully and rebuilt it back to how it ran in 2022. In the last few months our focus was to work on the engine and ensure its reliability and consistency. There are, of course, many other items on the "to-do" wish list like finding ways to reduce weight, simplify and improve, but given the agenda for this year, we opted to keep things simple and just ensure maximum vehicle reliability under any conditions.”
Pikes Peak was just the beginning of this unique car’s racing journey and there is clearly much more to come in the future.