Subaru Motorsports USA driver Scott Speed has set a new overall record on the Mount Washington Auto Road, winning the 2026 Paul Giblin Memorial Climb to the Clouds in the Subaru WRX: Project Midnight with a 5:11.982 run. The time beats Travis Pastrana’s previous benchmark of 5:28.67 from 2021, set in the 862-horsepower Airslayer STI.

Pastrana’s run came on a mixed-surface version of the 7.6-mile course. The Mount Washington Auto Road is now fully paved, posing a different challenge and suiting Project Midnight’s tarmac-focused hillclimb setup. According to Subaru Motorsports USA, Speed cut the existing record by 16.688 seconds in Sunday’s decisive run.

Fog, One Shot, New Record

Teams spent Friday and Saturday making half-course practice runs before lining up for two full attempts on Sunday. As competitors prepared, thick fog rolled over the upper mountain, forcing organizers to shorten the morning run and move the finish to mid-mountain, leaving only the afternoon for a full-course time.

Speed’s full run in the afternoon was his first complete ascent of the entire road all weekend, with the record resting on a single clean climb. “After I saw the time, it feels awesome!” Speed said. “I’m glad to be able to throw down a time that was so much faster than any of us expected…This was a big mental challenge for me.”

He underlined how tight the weather window was for the attempt. “With us going last, you can wait until it looks clear at the top and it still might not matter, because it takes five minutes to get there,” Speed added. “This was the only time I ran the full mountain this weekend, and a lot of things had to go right.”

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Source: Subaru

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Project Midnight And Its Tire Setup

The record continues the run of Subaru specials at Climb to the Clouds, with Subaru Motorsports USA now holding the overall mark in each of its five appearances at the event. Pastrana’s Airslayer STI previously headlined the program, including its appearance at Goodwood and in Gymkhana-style video projects built around his car.

Project Midnight itself debuted at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed. Built by Vermont SportsCar, the Subaru WRX-based race car combines extreme weight reduction, advanced aerodynamics, and a highly developed SUBARU BOXER engine, paired with Speed’s background in Formula One, rallycross, and time-attack competition. Subaru Motorsports USA describes it as the quickest and fastest WRX race car the team has constructed.

A major element in the record run was the tire package from Yokohama Tire. The company developed bespoke options for this attempt, and Speed selected the Yokohama ADVAN A005 slick, which uses a compound from Yokohama’s road-racing slick platform. The tires are designed to reach peak grip quickly and maintain it over the short, intense climb, prioritizing maximum grip and confidence over wear on the 7.6-mile ascent.

Motor1’s Take: Subaru’s WRX Project Midnight, Speed’s blend of circuit and rallycraft, and Yokohama’s quick-warming ADVAN A005 slicks lined up with a tiny weather window to deliver 5:11.982 on the fully paved Mount Washington course, so the next move is on rival teams and tire makers who want a piece of this record.

The Port Washington 12U Little League baseball team has one more chance to keep its summer dream alive.

After suffering its first loss of the Metro Region tournament Monday, Port Washington will face Connecticut’s Darien in an elimination game at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Little League East Region headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut.

The winner will advance to the championship game against Bayonne (New Jersey) at 7 p.m. Friday.

Port Washington fell to Bayonne, 12-2, in four innings Monday, but its players and coaches quickly turned their attention toward the next task at hand. The team entered the regional tournament after winning its first ever New York state championship on July 31 and is still two victories away from earning a berth in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

“We’ll be ready to play again on Wednesday,” manager Dave Gabriel said. “We’ll get another good practice in, we’ll get a good round of [batting practice] in and, I know it sounds cliche, but we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing. It wasn’t our day and that happens. That’s baseball.”

Port Washington showed flashes of its usual defensive ability against Bayonne, including a 9-2-6 double play in the second inning that ended a potential scoring threat. But Bayonne’s offense proved difficult to contain, scoring four runs in the first inning and five more in the third.

Mason Rincon’s two-run home run in the first helped set the tone for Bayonne. Gabriel said the Port Washington pitching staff will need to be ready for another strong offensive opponent Wednesday.

“Kudos to [Rincon], he’s a great hitter and that’s what great hitters do,” Gabriel said. “We’ll be back on Wednesday, hopefully we win and we can face Bayonne again.”

The All-Stars’ ace, Drew Theoharis, had to rest from the mound on Monday after exceeding his pitch limit in Saturday’s win over Lincoln (Rhode Island). Now available for Wednesday, Theoharis said the team has used its practices to address areas it can improve before the game.

“We’ve been working hard on hitting different speeds that will prepare us,” Theoharis said. “We’ve also been working on different scenarios that we’ve had trouble with in other games. I’m looking forward to hopefully winning.”

Darien enters the elimination game having lost to Bayonne, 8-2, in its tournament opener before defeating Lincoln on Sunday. Port Washington has watched both of Darien’s games and knows a win won’t be easy, but it’s up for the challenge.

“We’ve seen both of [Darien’s] games so far and they seem like a very good team,” Gabriel said. “So we’ll have our work cut out for us, but hopefully we can push through and make it to a championship on Friday.”

For Port Washington Little League president Eric Trenaman, regardless of Wednesday’s outcome, the team’s run has already represented something significant for the community.

“We are very proud of the program and the history that [Port Washington Youth Athletics] has built here,” Trenaman said. “It takes more than one, two, three people to do what gets done out here. It takes a village and we want to wish all the best to our Port Washington boys.”

The Gates Foundation has given the University of Washington the largest grant in its history, a 10-year award worth $540 million for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent research unit at UW.

Part of the UW School of Medicine, IHME will use the record grant to expand its Global Burden of Disease study, the world’s largest systematic effort to measure deaths, illness, disability, injuries, and health risks. The study currently provides health estimates for approximately 925 locations, but with the grant, that number is expected to grow to nearly 5,000 in the future.

The grant will support IHME’s health forecasting and future-scenarios work. IHME produces health forecasts through 2100 for every country, helping leaders anticipate population changes, disease trends, health risks, and the policy choices they face. IHME plans to connect those forecasts more closely to the latest disease burden findings, helping decision-makers assess and develop disease-prevention efforts.

The new funding will also expand IHME’s tracking of health financing, which currently provides a comprehensive accounting of health expenditures across 204 countries. Those data help governments and funders assess whether resources are reaching the populations, diseases, and places that have the greatest needs.

“Reliable and independent evidence can mean the difference between reacting to a health crisis after it has taken hold and acting early enough to change its course,” said Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, IHME director and professor of health metrics sciences, in a news release. “This investment will allow us to provide high-quality evidence at a much more local level and help leaders understand not only where health is improving or worsening, but which decisions can make the greatest difference for people.”

The IHME was established in 2007 with the help of funding from the Gates Foundation. In the years since then, it has grown into one of the world’s leading centers for health metrics.

“For nearly two decades, IHME has been one of the foundation’s most important global partners, helping us, governments, researchers, and global health partners around the world understand where health is improving, where progress is stalling, and where action is needed most,” said Mark Suzman, Chief Executive Officer of the Gates Foundation. “Our long-term commitment recognizes the value of this work to strengthen a shared evidence base that will continue to inform decisions to improve—and save—millions of lives.”

The Gates Foundation (formerly the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) was founded in 2000. Over its first 25 years, the foundation has invested more than $102.3 billion in grants for global health and development, U.S. education, and economic mobility. Bill Gates has said that in 2025 “he had made two decisions that define the foundation’s future: I’ll donate virtually all of my remaining wealth—about $200 billion—over the next two decades, and the foundation will close its doors at the end of 2045.” The UW gift reflects Gates’ plans for the foundation to focus on three goals in its remaining time:

• No mom, child, or baby dies of a preventable cause;
• The next generation grows up in a world without deadly infectious diseases; and
• Hundreds of millions of people break free from poverty, putting more countries on the path to prosperity.

“The Gates Foundation has been a steadfast partner of the University of Washington for decades, and we are grateful for its generous support. The UW is committed to improving the health of people in Washington and around the world, and this investment will expand IHME’s already significant impact, which will mean longer, healthier lives for countless people,” said UW President Robert J. Jones.