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Hollywood Hill Climb

Event Type: Time trial-based race for motorized vehicles
Location: Hollywood, California, USA

Event Frequency (annually, first weekend in August)
First Year Run: 1934
Vehicles Allowed: cars, trucks
Number of Entrants (2017): 450 (limited by organizers)
Number of Spectators (2017): approx. 50,000

The Hollywood Hill Climb, the 'Race To The Sign' as it is often referred to as, is a unique motorsport event that runs every summer in Los Angeles, where competitors start their run at North Gower Street just south of Hollywood Boulevard and charge through the Hollywoodland neighborhood up Mount Lee to the finish behind the Hollywood sign, roaring up a course that is just over four miles in length and gains 1,330 feet in altitude between the start and finish. The entire route has been paved since 1970, and has in modern times seen people race everything that has four wheels and an engine, from small hatchbacks to full-size diesel trucks.

With regularly there being over 800 applications for 450 entry spots, the Hollywood Hill Climb is an event where its perfectly wise and intelligent to try things nobody else has done. From large trucks to fully-electric racers to Formula One and Indycar racers modified for the purposes to specialized hill climb specials, if it has four wheels and an engine its probably taken a run up Mount Lee at some point. First gaining global fame in the 1980s for the war between Ford, Peugeot and Toyota's converted Group B rally cars setting and then resetting the record up the mountain and then the ever-crazier cars that took to the mountain in the 1990s (the Hillclimb rockets built by Nobuhiro Tajima and Steve Millen in this decade locked horns with the converted Indycars built by Bruce McCaw's PacWest Racing Team for supremacy up the mountain in these years) to the alternative vehicles and racing supercars of the 2000s, along with vintage and exotic sports cars, touring car racers, buggies, Le Mans Prototypes and pretty much anything else that could race up a mountain with four wheels. Speeds on the north section of the hill climb (the twisty part) rarely exceed 90 to 100 mph, while the fastest competitors on the straight sections on Beachwood Drive usually top out at around 140 to 150 mph, but only for short bursts. The pavement on the track is very smooth and as a result while speeds are very fast in some sections, accidents are rare on most parts of the track and the organizers have taken considerable precautions since the 1960s to protect properties along the course for all of the obvious reasons. Spectators are ordered to stay well clear of the track and a large number of volunteer track marshals do a good job of crowd control and competitor safety alike.

2017's event was won by Indycar legend Al Unser Jr. at the control of Ken Miller's awesome custom-built Toyota Hilux hillclimb special, effectively a Hilux pickup truck body on a custom chassis, with a supercharged Toyota NASCAR V8 (providing something like 1100 horsepower) driving all four wheels, while chasing him was the all-electric Nissan Leaf RH of British GT racer Jann Mardenborough, who lost his bid to be the first all-electric winner of the event by just 0.016 of a second.
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