450kW Subaru WRX STI sets hillclimb record

Driving along 12.16km of rough gravel road in 6 minutes and 9.09 seconds is impressive.

It means you’ll have travelled an average of 118.6km/h and that’s not slow when the road underneath you is comprised of dirt and loose rocks.

That’s also impressive when about half of that gravel road is chiselled into the side of a mountain.

What’s even more impressive is that someone just did it 24 seconds faster.

Subaru Rally Team USA driver Travis Pastrana has thrashed the Mt Washinton hillclimb route record with a time of 5 minutes and 44.7 seconds. That means he averaged 127km/h.

The 450kW rally-spec car has the Subaru WRX STI boxer-four, but tuned and boosted to reach the output which allowed this record-breaking run.

As well as the onboard video (above), Subaru USA recorded the run in 360-degrees, which you can watch below.

If you’re in bandwidth-poor Australia, it might pay to lower the quality so you can see things happening smoothly.

Pastrana says he hopes his record will hold up for a while, though there’s surely some madman out there willing to risk flinging themselves off a cliff in the name of motorsport.

“On our first run I leaned on the tires too much on the bottom half, which made the top half very loose and scary but really fun, I was sideways a lot but I’m sure I lost some time,” Pastrana

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“On the second run I conserved the tires and drove cleaner, I really didn’t expect to drop the record further.

“This road is such a challenge, it’s probably the toughest road to drive flat-out in the world.”

The former record-holder was Pastrama’s team mate David Higgins, who would have had another attempt at the course had he not almost flung himself off the edge of the cliff.

“It was going really well up until it went really bad,” he said.

“If you are going fast enough to win the event you are going fast enough to crash.

“But there is no better person to lose my record to than Travis.”