One Shot Through the Fog: How Scott Speed and Project Midnight Took 16 Seconds Off the Mount Washington Record

The forecast at Mount Washington is a joke that everyone in New England tells and nobody laughs at. On the Sunday of the 2026 Paul Giblin Memorial Climb to the Clouds, fog sat on the top of the mountain. Organizers shortened the first competition run and moved the finish to mid-mountain. That left one chance for anybody to run the whole road: the afternoon ascent, if the summit cleared.

It cleared. Scott Speed went, and he did not waste it. His time in the Subaru WRX: Project Midnight was 5:11.892, according to Subaru Motorsports USA, a new overall record that lowered Travis Pastrana's 2021 mark of 5:28.67 by 16.778 seconds. "This was the only time I ran the full mountain this weekend," Speed said in Subaru's results story.

A mountain that has been eating cars since 1904

Climb to the Clouds runs up the Mount Washington Auto Road in Gorham, New Hampshire, and the event dates back to 1904, Subaru noted in its preview. The road climbs more than 4,600 feet from base to summit with an average grade of 11.8 percent, and visibility, wind and temperature near the top can change quickly. The weather is part of the course.

Subaru owns the recent history here. David Higgins set records in 2011 and 2014 in WRX STI race cars. Pastrana set records in 2017 and 2021, the second in the 862-horsepower Airslayer STI. With Speed's run, Subaru Motorsports USA has set the overall record in all five of its appearances at the event.

Why Project Midnight was the right car

The Airslayer was a remarkable machine, but Jalopnik's Justin Hughes pointed out what it was built for. It started as a Gymkhana car based on a rallycross platform, perfect for jumping over a river and running a mountain that, in 2021, still had a gravel section at the top. That last gravel stretch has since been paved, Subaru noted, so the course is now all asphalt. That changed the right tool for the job.

Project Midnight is that tool. Built by Vermont SportsCar from a production WRX, it debuted at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed and was designed from the start for pavement. It uses a turbocharged 2.0-liter Subaru boxer engine making 670 horsepower and 680 lb-ft of torque, with a 9,500 rpm redline, and weighs under 2,500 pounds, about 300 pounds less than its predecessor, per Subaru. It has a full carbon fiber widebody, a lightened chassis, 18-by-11-inch OZ Racing magnesium wheels and Yokohama Advan slicks. Yokohama even developed a special Advan A005 slick for the attempt, according to Subaru.

The trade is obvious on paper: almost 200 fewer horsepower than the Airslayer, and 300 fewer pounds. Hughes suggested the power deficit might not matter as much as it looks, given how the lighter car had already performed at Goodwood and VIR.

The weekend

Speed had never competed at Mount Washington before. Before the event, he said the course was "a unique challenge for both me and the preparation of Project Midnight," and that "there is simply no way to be competitive here without a complete understanding of every one of the course's turns."

Practice ran on half the mountain each day. Jalopnik reported that on the first day, on the upper half, Speed's second run of 2:21.5 was the quickest of the day and more than five seconds faster than Pastrana's equivalent. Day two started wet before drying out, and his second run of 3:07.3 was six seconds faster than Pastrana's split, Jalopnik reported. Each time, Speed's second run was his best, which is what you would expect from a driver learning a road in real time.

Then came race day and the fog. Speed was candid about how much it messed with him. "This was a big mental challenge for me," he said, describing how "you can wait until it looks clear at the top and it still might not matter." When the full course finally opened, he had one try.

"After I saw the time, it feels awesome!" Speed said afterward.

A Goodwood car comes home

Project Midnight already had a reputation before New Hampshire. It earned back-to-back podiums in the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb shootout as the fastest internal combustion entry, according to Subaru, and Jalopnik noted that Speed also used it to break a Virginia International Raceway track record he had set in the Airslayer.

Speed himself is a pavement driver at heart, with Formula One and NASCAR in his past before his rallycross career, as Hughes pointed out. Mount Washington gave him a course that rewarded that background.

Room for more

Hughes made a fair point: there is probably time left on the table. This was Speed's first visit, his practice runs kept getting faster and he got exactly one shot at the full road. With another visit and a little more development on the car, Hughes wrote, a run under five minutes does not sound crazy.

For now, the record belongs to a car that weighs less than many street sports cars and a driver who had seen the top half of the mountain twice and the whole thing once. In fog country, sometimes one clear window is all you need.