Michael Dunlop Will Race the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb

This year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb continues to get more interesting with each passing. First, there is the news that Ducati will show up with an unnamed “exhibition” bike with Carlin Dunne onboard, which very well could be a prototype for the widely anticipated Streetfighter V4 model.

And now, we get word that Michael Dunlop – one of the hottest riders at the Isle of Man TT races right now – will race to the clouds this year as well, riding on a 2019 model year BMW S1000R.

Dunlop will be joined on the Wunderlich MOTORSPORT powered by ProKASRO team by 2018’s rookie of the year (with a 10:21.932 run) Lucy Glöckner, both of who will be racing in the Heavyweight class at Pikes Peak.

This will not be the first year that we see someone from the Irish road racing series come to America to compete at Pikes Peak, as Guy Martin came to Colorado in 2014, riding in the exhibition class on a 1992 Suzuki GSX-R1100 with a Martek frame and turbocharger, which he built himself of course.

The outing didn’t go so well for Martin, with the bike having more than a few problems with the elevation at Pikes Peak, but the star power of having one of the Isle of Man TT’s biggest names was certainly a draw for the iconic American race.

Since then, Pikes Peak has been keen to get another top TT star back on the mountain, and it looks like for 2019 they have been successful in that attempt.

With Michael Dunlop chasing the outright TT win tally, set by his uncle Joey, it will be interesting to see how he goes at Pikes Peak….though, we should warn that Dunlop is known for his mercurial nature.

As such, we won’t believe he is racing until we see him leave the starting line at the bottom of Pikes Peak, but once he drops the speed hammer on that BMW, it should be quite the sight to see from this ferocious competitor.