Rhys Millen is a true motorsport all-rounder, competing successfully in rallycross, drifting, rallying and off-road Baja events - while also carving out a successful career as a Hollywood stunt driver.
The New Zealander is also a veteran competitor on the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, an event his father Rod won five times. Millen Jr has two outright wins on the event and has also notched up a variety of class records in a diverse range of machinery.
Millen’s first victory came in 2021 in a Time-Attack-class Hyundai Genesis Coupé, and in 2015 he scored the first overall win in an electric car, powering the Drive eO PP03 up the hill in 9min 7.222sec.
So when Bentley launched its ambitious three-phase Pikes Peak programme in 2018, Millen was a natural choice as a driver, bringing not just experience of the 156-turn mountain course but also a proven ability to adapt to differing machines.
Bentley’s initial project was to set a new record for a production-spec SUV, which Millen did in the Bentayga with a 10min 49.902sec run. The following year, Millen set a new overall production car hill record in a Continental GT with a time of 10min 18.488sec.
For Bentley’s third effort, the stakes have been ramped up: Millen will drive a heavily modified Continental GT3 in the Time Attack 1 class, essentially the top division for production-based machines.
The Contintal GT3 features a specially tuned version of Bentley's 4.0-litre turbocharged V8 with more than 750bhp, and runs on renewable e-fuel. Millen is officially gunning for the 9min 23.721sec class record set in 2019 by Raphael Astier in a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Turbo, but will also have a chance at an outright victory this weekend.
Autocar caught up with Millen midway through his pre-event testing schedule on sections of the hillclimb to talk about tackling the daunting course in such a range of machinery.
How exciting was the offer to drive the Bentley Continental GT3?
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