A massively powerful carbon-bodied Subaru WRX STI, a driver who has no fear …. it’s a mesmerising lockdown special.

TAKE a highly skilled and hugely committed driver, add a steroidal car – point at impressive mountain climb route, press ‘record’ button.

The recipe that gave the world ‘cloud dancing’, Ari Vatanen’s incredible tilt at Pikes Peak in 1990, and, in 2016, our own ‘Mad’ Mike Whiddett’s equally ballsy drifting attack on the Crown Range Road in a 560kW Mazda RX-7 was used again on Monday, this time to capture the ‘other’ Hoonigan, Travis Pastrana, totally smash his own record over a route that, while shorter than Pikes Peak, looks even scarier.

Back in 2017, Travis Pastrana set a record of five minute and 44 seconds for the annual hillclimb run at Mt Washington, a place anyone who studies meteorology will know of.

At 1916 metres, it’s the tallest peak in America’s northeast and also simultaneously home to the “world's worst weather” and the observatory that records it. Reaching there means taking the ‘Auto Road’. The name sounds innocuous, right? The reality is anything but; tight and sinuous, with jaw-dropping views, it’s generally a 30 minute drive on any ordinary day. 

Anyway, every year the local racing club runs a hillclimb. Pastrana, who has international repute as an American professional motorsports competitor and stunt performer who has won championships and X Games also been part of Ken Block’s Hoonigan crew, has been racing rally and rallycross for Subaru Stateside.

His 2017 Auto Road effort had bettered the previous record by 24 seconds, but he was confident it was still beatable. He just needed the right car.

That machine arrived last year. A brand new, 616kW purpose-built racing Subaru WRX STI designed for Gymkhana 2020. On Monday, NZ time, he went out and beat his own record by 16 seconds.

The attached photos show how all-out that push was in his carbon-bodied Airslayer STI, but the video is all the more breath-taking. The narrow, twisty and treacherous Auto Road stretches 12.2 kilometres, ascends at average of a 12 percent grade and delivers a huge count of corners. This is five minute and 28.67s of intense concentration; full attack from the first second.

For the first few kilometres it’s flying between the trees at low elevation. But three minutes in, Pastrana hits the tree line. Suddenly, a blanket of trees is replaced by a sheer drop-off on the driver's side for almost the entire rest of the run.

Thirty seconds after that, he hits another butt-pucker: Most of the route is sealed, but for some reason the local authority has left a big section in gravel.

As Road and Track magazine puts it: “This is where it really becomes clear that that the Air Slayer is built for this. The surface change does not change Pastrana's approach at all until one final dirt hairpin, where he gets enough room to finally pitch the car into a massive slide before rejoining the paved road.”

All of it makes for one of the more memorable onboard runs you will ever see.