Racing to the Clouds: How Tracy Gaudu Conquered Pikes Peak

NASA Southeast Super Unlimited racer Tracy Gaudu had been hoping to take on Pikes Peak for years, but the confidence she needed to commit was hard to find. “Ever since I started hill-climbing four years ago, I dreamed about going to Pikes Peak, Gaudu said. “I’d watch the races online and picture my car out there on the starting line, but it’s something you think you can never do.

“Despite that, I could hear a voice in the back of my mind asking, ‘What if I could?’ Something kept telling me, ‘Tracy, you need to enter,’” she continued. “I made all sorts of excuses of why not to enter, because I didn’t want to face that little voice.

“I don’t have enough hill-climbing experience. I’m just a small team and they prefer the big teams, all that sort of stuff. That critical voice drowned out the quiet, hopeful one for a long time, and I kept the dream to myself until the end of last year,” she explained.

“At PRI, that quiet voice was as clear as day, so I decided to mention those thoughts about Pikes Peak to Ken Lingenfelter, and he seemed to be excited about it. That got me to think more reasonably about going. ‘All they can say is no,’ I told myself.”

Gaudu is not the first NASA racer to take on the mountain.

After getting accepted, she was shocked to see how much social media played a part in being picked. However small her online presence was, she got the nod. “They said they chose me because of the grassroots appeal,” she said. “They thought that with me being involved, I would encourage other small teams.”

Suddenly, she could start envisioning her future confidently. “I knew I would be the first woman to drive a Corvette up Pikes Peak, but honestly I didn’t really care about that. Now, to be the fastest Corvette up there would be great, though. I mean, it’s America’s sports car and America’s mountain,” she said.

With her confidence peaking, Gaudu decided to focus solely on this one goal. A little late in the preparation game, she had to set aside other racing responsibilities to reach her aim. “I spent a lot of money last year trying to win the SU championship with NASA Southeast in 2024, and thought I might slow down in ’25 to recover financially, but then this happened. So much for that!” she chuckled nervously.

Gaudu stepped down from her role as Super Touring/Super Unlimited series leader with NASA Southeast to focus on Pikes Peak.

Connect the Dots

Her fundraising campaign started off on a sour note. As if the looming goal in front of her were not intimidating enough, one of her longtime sponsors wasn’t able to provide the support she had been hoping to receive. Undeterred, Gaudu found major sponsorship from the Longhorn Corvette Club, and then put together a GoFundMe, and with some support from Anderson Composites, she put together a sizable amount, though it would not be enough without her contributing a lot of her own funds.

So much of that money would go toward ensuring her C6 was safe enough for a climb up a 14,115-foot mountain with steep falloffs. “My car was pretty good as far as race tech was concerned, but I had to add gussets in the corners of the cage, replace the X-bars with NASCAR-style door bars, and install a dash bar. I also installed a mount for an oxygen canister, added door pulls, and installed a Radium Engineering 14-gallon fuel cell,” she said.

With her car ready for the Race to the Clouds, she began studying the 12.4-mile course and its 156 turns on the simulator, then trailered out from northeast Tennessee to Colorado for a three-day test weekend at the beginning of June.

Into Thin Air

Upon arrival, the environment made itself felt. “I had this low-grade headache when I drove into Colorado Springs for the first time that practice weekend. If you walked real fast or did a lot of work around the car, you’d feel it,” she said.

Adding to the challenge, access to the course is limited. “You don’t get to run the whole mountain in one go. You’ve got three sections, and you’re only able to run one each day.”

Then there’s the sleep deprivation. You have to get up at 2 a.m. to get to the gate when it opens at 3:30, then attend the driver’s meeting at 5. You begin your practice runs right when the sun comes up. It seems to come up early on the mountain. You have to end your runs around 8:30 and load up quickly to get off the mountain before the public starts to drive up the mountain at 9.

“The lower section is like a road course. It’s fast and flowing, with a couple technical spots. I felt at home there,” Gaudu said. “It’s not that scary since there are no dropoffs. There are trees of course, but I’m used to being near trees. The second section is full of switchbacks and steep inclines. It’s where you start climbing in elevation and you finally rise above the tree line. It looks like Mars up there, seriously. You finally climb up to Devil’s Playground, the start of the third section, where it gets really fast. There, it’s wide open and the speeds are much faster, and in the middle of some of the sweepers are some big bumps that you try to avoid.”

Up top, they say the mountain changes every day. When the mountain freezes and thaws, it causes undulations in the pavement. There is a section up there called Boulder Park where throttling through there is probably the best way, but it’s extremely bumpy. You really have to hang onto the car. The problem is if you set the car up soft for that section, it won’t benefit you in the lower sections. Gaudu set her car up semi-soft.

“I could feel the wheels spinning, but I powered through,” Gaudu said. “You just need to figure out where the worst bumps are located. The top section truly tests your courage and your ability to put that fear out of your mind, and that’s where I had the most difficulty as a rookie. It’s just so fast and unforgiving. I think you need real experience there to push 100 percent. I tried not to look around too much and just focus as far ahead as I could.

“In practice, I came across a marmot at the top section. He must’ve been 25 pounds. He looked like a huge groundhog. He moved right onto the race line and he just sat there and didn’t even move. I don’t have a horn in the car to honk, so I just drove around him. I swore he was giving me the side eye daring me to take the road from him!”

In the video that Pikes Peak International Hillclimb makes available for rookies to review, it mentioned Travis Pastrana coming across a herd of bighorn sheep on one of his runs. Maybe a marmot wasn’t so bad after all.

Just getting to this point was not easy on Gaudu’s checkbook, but she decided to spend more to make the most of her limited time. “I knew what I knew from the sim, and the early practice most definitely helped. It was worthwhile, since it made me feel more comfortable by race weekend,” she added.

After the successful practice weekend came to a close, Gaudu called on her growing network to help her in the interim. Mike Maroone Chevrolet North in Colorado Springs offered to store the car, trailer and truck between practice and the race. The Colorado Springs Corvette Club also put her in touch with Under Pressure Performance, who replaced lifters and changed the camshaft. In the middle section, the climb was challenging with a normally aspirated motor, so Gaudu had them replace the COMP cam for a Brian Tooley Stage 4 camshaft for more low-end torque. This did help with the steep inclines.

A week later, Gaudu returned and went through the five stages of tech inspection. On Tuesday she began the official practice in the middle section. She was able to practice on the upper section on Wednesday, and on Thursday. Gaudu practiced and qualified on the lower section.

Local Out-of-Town Celebrity

On race week, competitors were blessed with beautiful weather. Though it rained in the afternoons, everyone enjoyed dry running in the morning, a small perk for having to wake up so early. Then there was an extra day of practice, and Gaudu considered running the top section, but her crew was tired, so she decided against it. In the end, it wouldn’t matter.

Friday night is always a party. Downtown Colorado Springs hosted Fan Fest, with thousands of fans in the streets.

“I got to sign hero cards, gave an interview on a live radio broadcast, and joined a Women in Motorsports panel sponsored by Mobil 1 and Porsche of Colorado Springs,” Gaudu said. “Michele Mouton, Lyn St. James, Lonnie Unser, Emelia Hartford, and Burcu Cetinkaya Bonnet were all sitting there with me. It was kind of surreal, actually.”

On race day, the drivers’ meeting was really early at 6:30 a.m. It was blowing 80-100 miles per hour on top of the mountain, which was blowing rocks all over the place. Some porta-johns had been knocked over, and they had been strapped down! In the end, officials decided to end the race prematurely at Glen Cove, the start of the second section. It was only the third time in the event’s history that it had been cut short by that much. Snowfall at higher elevations has caused the course to be shortened, but typically at Devil’s Playground.

“It’s just a little disappointing we couldn’t do the full race on race day. I understand the wind risks, but I never thought that wind would end the race,” she said. “It was frustrating, because going off of practice times, I would’ve had a good shot of being faster than Rob Holland’s Corvette record if the weather had cooperated.

“I always knew I could make it to the top and take the checkers,” Gaudu said. “Even though we didn’t get to run the entire race, it is hard to not want to come back and try to beat the time of the 2025 attempt. Next year, I’d like to do a few things to the car to make it even more competitive. For starters, I’m going to work on getting sponsorship earlier this time around and not waiting to start until 2026.”

When she does return, she will have made changes to her trusty Corvette. “I’m going to improve the cooling. I may lay down my radiator to improve airflow,” she said. “In each section, I felt my aero was pretty good, but I could probably use more. I definitely need a dual-element wing. APR helped me with some bigger endplates, but when the air’s that thin, you need as much aero as you can get.”

That brings up the question of forced induction. Gaudu is debating adding a turbocharger.

“Pikes Peak International Hillclimb is not like any kind of racing I have ever done in my life,” she said. “The preparation of the car and yourself is intense, and just the fact that you only get one chance to take on the mountain on race day creates so much pressure. For an adrenaline junkie like myself, it was the most incredible experience I have ever had in my Corvette! It is just you, the mountain, and, of course, the clock.”