Open-wheel veteran JR Hildebrand had big plans for 2022: race the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and even the Bonneville Salt Flats with a modified IndyCar. Unfortunately, they were too big in the end.

In a series of tweets made on Sunday, Hildebrand provided details on the ultimately abandoned project to compete at Pikes Peak with IndyCar. The idea first came together in 2021, when Hildebrand was entered with a Dallara DW12, but was pushed back a year due to the difficulties in securing partners and support for a race not sanctioned by IndyCar.

With an additional year to prepare, things looked more promising. Hildebrand tweeted everything had been prepared including the “Car, crew, tires, budget”; while he was unable to source a standard IndyCar engine since it lacked intercooling, he managed to find an alternative that he remarked “would have been even more badass.” Hildebrand was no stranger to Pikes Peak either, having finished second in class in a Porsche Cayman in 2018.

Unfortunately, one of IndyCar’s “major partners” objected. He did not name the party and added that “IndyCar was ok with it, but required all others were also ok with it. Doing this (even with a current IndyCar engine, but esp with something else) would breach a number of aspects of the partner agreements, so that was just the deal.”

Hildebrand explained the car would be heavily modified to meet the demands going up the mountain. Besides Pikes Peak, a run along the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats was also in the works; he did not specify if it would be an attempt at a land speed record, though the current single-seater record there is only 246.908 mph set by BAR Honda F1 in 2006.

“Car was going to be a mashup of universal aero kit/aeroscreen mid-section (side pods, engine cover, etc had all been reconfigured by then) but aero-kit era front/rear wings + full diffuser,” he wrote. “Gears were turning to go to Bonneville, too. Indy, Pikes, the salt, all in one year.

“The number of people who *wanted* to see this happen and instantly stepped up to help was awesome. It was gonna be old-school; would require an unusual amount of figuring things out on the fly than what mainstream motorsport has become. But that’s what made it so badass to me!

“To anyone finding out about any of this for the first time and thinking it sounds cool, rest assured it’s still on my agenda. Exciting ideas usually outlast the stiffs.”

He also looked into doing the hillclimb in a Panoz DP01 but it “just wasn’t something anyone could really align around on multiple fronts.”

Had things worked out, it technically would have marked the IndyCar Series’ return to Pikes Peak for the first time in over five decades. The hillclimb was on the Championship Car calendar from 1946 to 1970, under both AAA and USAC sanction and primarily being a non-points race, though it did count for points on some instances.

For the 2025 PPIHC, Danny Aitken is entered in a 2001 Reynard with a twin-turbo GM Gen V / LT engine.

Featured image credit: Karl Zemlin / Penske Entertainment