VOL. 55 ISSUE 27 JULY 10, 2018 P101
I was ecstatic. I love the KTM Super
Duke. It's a delightfully brutish steed, a
1970s muscle car reincarnated as a 2017
naked bike. It has nothing to do with sense
and sensibility and everything to do with
going fast—with a one-piece bar. You gotta
be comfortable.
This year, I jumped on the bandwagon of
the man fast becoming the ultimate Pikes
Peak racer. Chris Fillmore attempted to
take another race record in 2018, this time
in the Middleweight class. He decimated
the overall race record in 2017, setting a
9:49.625 on the same Super Duke as
mine, some three seconds up on the old
mark set by Carlin Dunne back in 2012, the
year the mountain was finally fully paved.
For 2018, Fillmore had a new weapon in
the new KTM 790 Duke. It's a bike not yet
on U.S. shores but when you're as impor-
tant to KTM as Fillmore is, things can hap-
pen. This little dynamo had very little mods
from stock, yet in his capable hands proved
to be a choice machine.
Fillmore would end the 2018 race third,
only 4.9 seconds off the overall victory
against bikes with near twice the capacity.
He blitzed the Middleweight class competi-
tion, setting the bar at 10:04.038, some 30
seconds faster than the previous record set
by Codie Vahsholtz in 2017 (check out the
video and feature for exactly what's been
done to the 790 to turn it into a real racer).
The 1290 Super Duke is a known
quantity, and with Pirelli back on board for
another year, everything clicked into place
Conditions
during early
morning
practice in the
W's was not
ideal. Visibility
was severely
reduced, but
it made for
incredible
photos.
