Tom Tang and his crew are in their final weeks of preparation for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC), with race week starting on June 15th and the main event on Sunday June 21st. Everything comes down to an all-out assault on the mountain road on the 21st, but there’s a lot of preparation that goes into getting there and being ready.
Tom Tang will be taking on the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb for the third time in 2026 and we’ll be with him along the way, reporting on his preparation and planning here on BimmerLife.com, followed by a report on the big event in BimmerLife magazine. In this second installment, we focus on Tang’s very special and very modified E46 M3.
Tang is now in his third year of competing at the PPIHC, and his experience makes everything more seamless. “In my rookie year in 2024 everything felt very daunting with all of the logistics involved in racing at Pikes Peak,” he says. “When you’re a rookie you may be accepted to compete but you’re not signed off for race day until you meet certain requirements. One of the requirements is that you have to have tested and driven on every section of the mountain prior to race week, and they hold two test weekends for rookies. Back in 2024, coming from the San Francisco Bay Area, that was a lot to plan for, because not only did you have to be there for race week but you also had to be there a couple weeks in advance for the testing. It added a lot of cost and complexity.”
Tang and his crew transport the M3 to Colorado themselves in a truck with a 30-foot trailer that is packed with everything from fuel and tires to spare parts and tools. The cooperation of the Winslow BMW dealership in Colorado Springs has been a huge help. “Luckily in my rookie year, Winslow BMW offered to let us store the truck and trailer with the car there after the test for two weeks so we were able to fly home and then fly back for race week. That made it a lot easier.” Tang and his crew continue to use Winslow BMW as their base of operations during race week.
This year, Tang doesn’t have to go to the test, but he and three members from his team will be transporting the car to Colorado Springs, which typically takes around two and a half days, with the other crew members flying in. There will be nine members of the team (including Tang) this year, with a crew chief, a race engineer and three crew mechanics, as well as three guys handling media. “We rent a big Airbnb in Colorado Springs that’s able to fit all of us and is close to Winslow BMW,” says Tang. “During race week, we cook and eat at the house just because it’s easier. One of our traditions is that every night a different team member cooks dinner for the rest of the gang. We like to have fun with it.”
Much of the equipment that is brought to Colorado Springs goes in the trailer, and some is drop-shipped to Winslow BMW. This year, the team will bring four sets of wheels with the tires already mounted, including three sets with Toyo racing slicks and one set of wet tires. They will also bring an extra set of unmounted slicks and a spare wet tire. “We typically don’t burn through a lot of tires during race week,” says Tang. “On average, we’re only getting around four to five runs per day and those are only a third of the course. In theory, one set of tires should last all week for practice, and I’ll typically throw on some fresh sticker tires for qualifying.”
Interestingly, the M3 also uses a lot less fuel in the higher altitude of Pikes Peak. “We consume a lot less fuel at the mountain because of the altitude than we do at sea level,” says Tang. “Here at home, at Sonoma Raceway (which is around 2.5 miles per lap), the car consumes about a gallon of fuel per lap, which is pretty terrible. That’s with the Ignite Red, which is E90 ethanol and 114-octane. At the mountain, we consume less than half of that. I typically transport the car full with 14 gallons of fuel, and we bring four dry break jugs with around five gallons of fuel in each jug. We also have the guys at Ignite drop ship a 55-gallon drum of fuel to Winslow BMW that we can pump fuel out of.”
Tang and his team also have to bring their own nitrous that’s used in the M3 to make peak power on the mountain. “I previously tried to source nitrous locally in Colorado Springs but it’s tricky to find a reliable source and I have a pretty good vendor here in the Bay Area,” says Tang. “We use a really high quality nitrous that is dental grade instead of automotive, so it’s really clean.” The team will be bringing three mother bottles of nitrous (mother bottles are large capacity cylinders) that each hold around 50 pounds of usable nitrous. Of course, the team also brings spare parts such as axles and driveshafts as well as a spare splitter and diffuser, which are the more susceptible body parts.
Race week starts on Monday June 15th with checks and scrutineering, followed by practice and qualifying from Tuesday through Friday. “Qualifying is specific to the lower third section of the mountain, and I run that this year on Thursday,” says Tang. “Tuesday I’ll be running the middle section and then Wednesday I run the top third. Friday is optional so I can run the middle again, which is beneficial to me because in my first two years, both of the days I was scheduled to run the middle in practice we had bad weather. Fingers crossed the weather holds out this year.”
There’s also a Fanfest on Friday June 19th in downtown Colorado Springs, and Rocky Mountain Chapter of BMW CCA will host a VIP social with Tang on Friday from 3:00-5:00. There will also be a pre-race event at Winslow BMW on Saturday morning (6/20) along with other BMW competitors. You can follow the action from the mountain on the PPIHC YouTube channel, or their website.
—David Haueter
[Photos courtesy Tom Tang]
