Justin Wilson describes his 2004 Porsche 911 GT3 as a racecar with manners. He’s navigated hillclimbs, and ripped around on tracks and lapping events in this polite little Porsche, so when he heard about the Spectre 341 Challenge Hill Climb, “I just had to do it,” he said. “It was just too good to be true.”

Justin Wilson, 10th Place: 3:33.5

The GT3 didn’t disappoint, despite this being the first time for Wilson and geographically quite different from hillclimbs through forests in Washington. Wilson made the 341 club on the second day of the Challenge by nearly 8 seconds.

There’s not much you have to do to a GT3 in terms of performance, so Wilson concentrated on safety upgrades: roll bar, racing seats and harnesses, brake enhancements.

Going fast has been a pursuit Wilson takes seriously. The general contractor from Seattle has gone fast on jet skis, go-karts and SCCA events. But, he admitted he underestimated the 5.2-mile, roughly paved, off-camber Geiger Grade from Virginia City, Nev. to the historical Comstock Lode mining area.

“It was harder than I thought,” he said. “I researched it, watched videos. It looks flat and wide in those videos.” Flat and wide will never be used in the same Wilson sentence with “Spectre 341.” The organizers gave newbies a trip up the grade in an RV. That trip plagued Wilson throughout Spectre 341 Eve. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Wilson didn’t crack the 3:41 time the first day. The course went away after 11 a.m., too slick for someone trying to learn the course and go fast at the same time. But the second run on the second day, he knew he’d cracked the code. Like any good racer, he figured he could go even faster, but his next lap was red flagged. By the time he got back on the course, it was too slick to better his 3:33.5 time. That’ll have to wait until next year when he comes back with lighter wheels, wider tires, more rear wing and front splitter—in other words, with more grip.

“It’s a cool fraternity,” Wilson said of the group of drivers that took the Challenge. He grew up watching Lou Gigliotti race. “He was my hero,” he said. “And I was in the same race with him.” The two will meet up again in Portland for an event.

Ed Hugo, a San Francisco lawyer, had a unique perspective on the 2011 Spectre 341 Challenge Hill Climb. “It was heaven,” he said of the 5.2-mile closed course, two-lane blacktop with 22 turns on its way up the Geiger Grade between Virginia City, Nev. and the Comstock Lode area.

Ed Hugo, 9th Place: 3:32.8

The Spectre course was gravelly, off-camber and suffered from multiple layers of asphalt, not exactly heaven. Hugo, who came in ninth in the Challenge with a 3:32.8 in a 2008 Dodge Viper was comparing the hill climb with his participation in Mexico’s Chihuahua Express a few months before.

“The Express was a three-day event that covers 1,000 miles, a combination race and rally,” Hugo said. Chihuahua, near the Copper Canyon, serves as the hub of daily excursions out and back, separated into eight to 12 speed sections and transit, or rally, sections in between. He came in third overall, first in his class with the Viper. The road surface was paved alright, but over ungraded dirt. “There were ripples in areas,” he said. There were times the Viper had all four wheels in the air over the roughest portions of the course. Yes, compared to that, the Geiger Grade was smooth as silk. More...

It was a worthy effort—and a close call as well. Aaron Pfadt was hell-bent on getting into the 341 Club, an elite group of drivers who have scaled the 5.2-mile Geiger Grade between Virginia City and the Comstock Lode area in 3:41 or less.

The 2011 Spectre 341 Challenge Hill Climb was Pfadt’s first run up the mountain and, technically, was a way to showcase his Salt Lake City company’s—Pfadt Racing—new suspension system for Camaros. The driver knew his car and the suspension; what he had to learn quickly was the tricky 22-turn closed course.

Pfadt is a veteran of performance street driving and road courses. His criteria for participating in racing events was the degree in which they were unusual. The Spectre 341 Challenge made the cut.

He and his 2010 Chevy Camaro SS were well on their way to cracking the code of the winding, treacherous Nevada highway. With a full tank of gas, a passenger and an approximate two-ton weight, he’d managed a 3:56 on the first run and knew the goal time was within reach. More...

There’s a sweet irony to Justin Schuh’s sizzling performance on his first hillclimb, the Spectre 341 Challenge. Schuh, 31, drove his stock 2012 Nissan GT-R to seventh place at an average speed of 88.39 mph on what amounts to a roughly paved truck trail, cantilevered over 500-foot drop-offs.

Justin Schuh, 7^th place, 3:31.8

Here’s the irony part: Schuh is director of safety on a Wyoming oil field. “I just love to drive fast,” he said, “to explore the car’s performance.”

The Spectre 341 was the last leg of Schuh and his girlfriend’s road trip to Northern California from the oil fields of Wyoming. Schuh is no stranger to high altitude and winding roads, but the experience of legally screaming up a mountain without the threat of on-coming traffic or sharing your lane with an RV was all new.

Schuh started his odyssey of high performance driving with a BMW car club, logging miles on road courses and autocrosses. He and co-drivers ran an ’84 turbocharged Saab in the 24 Hours of Lemons, a race for cars in the $500 range. He’s had plenty of track time as an instructor for BMWs in the SCCA, his specialty: safety, of course, and control. More...

Corvettes did better than any other single type of car on this year’s Spectre 341 Hillclimb to Virginia City. Given the potential for full-throttle thrills, it’s no surprise that several participants were Corvette owners. This year, four in particular took on the Geiger Grade leading up to Virginia City: winner Lou Gigliotti, Randy Harris (Sixth place), Ryan Tauchen (14th place), and Frank Vanson (19th place). This quad of Vettes all had exhilarating experiences to relate. We’ve already covered Gigliotti of Wylie, Texas, who drove his winning LG Motorsports 2010 ZR1 to blistering elapsed time of 3:14 (averaging 96.27 mph), a full 7.3 seconds faster than his race-winning run last year.

Besides Gigliotti, seasoned 341 contender Randy Harris manned the wheel of a tricked-out black 2000 C5 for the first time, having run a ’91 ZR1 and Porsche 911 Turbo in the previous two decades. Even though his 650-hp, twin-turbo Lingenfelter mill has less torque than Gigliotti’s grinding machine, he still maintained a speed 88.58 mph over the five-mile sprint, finishing a scant 15 seconds behind the fastest time. Even so, he was not to be consoled:

“That’s a long 15 seconds,” he winced. “What Lou did in the last two years—it’s incredible!”

Harris compensated for having comparatively less power by adding bigger Baer brakes, wider wheels, Fox shocks and fatter swaybars, along with a weight reduction by stripping out the interior.

“I feel I went way overboard with gutting it, but then you turn the key and press the accelerator, and you forget about what’s missing as your senses overtake you,” he points out. “At the Virginia City hill climb, it’s all adrenaline, with your mind and the dangers keeping that adrenaline in check.”

Confirming Gagliotti’s observations, he admits that the most challenging aspect of the 341 is staying focused and, “Not messing up … It’s not a 10/10ths course. I’ve had two wrecks on it over the years, and that kinda slows you down a bit.” Even so, he went home happy: “It was a good year,” he summed up.

Spectre Performance: (909) 673-9800, 1720 South Carlos Ave., Ontario, CA 91761, www.spectreperformance.com.