In the spirit of last month’s U2-themed report Andrew Gee uses Movie titles and popular song lyrics to help us picture the second round of this season’s Central Zone Club Truck Challenge held near Feilding on Nov 18 last year.

 “You want answers?

“I want the truth.

“You can't handle the truth.”

Or perhaps you can, because the truth is that a small club of a few good men put on the second round of this season’s Club Truck Challenge.

Steve Stewart, Mark Watchorn and his family, Rae, Mikayla and Stephen got together and marked out a course at the Dransfeild's farm near Palmerston North on a scorching hot Saturday. 

Come Sunday though and it was hosing down with rain all morning changing the conditions completely.  Mark and Brendan Watchhorn have their hearts in the right place, and in Brendan's case a surgeon was called in to check just where that heart is, as they keep the CTC on track including recently being able to add a fifth round to this year's series.  

A few more good men were involved in the Deadwood Safari, the Wellington round of the National Trials series held the week before, either as competitors or officials; Kevin Galbraith, Hintzy, Phil the Dogfather, Dave McGinnity and Marty Green.

Yet a week later they still found time to compete in the CTC.

A good field (of dreams)

Linton was within easy range of the Wairarapa and Manawatu clubs which gave us a good field of serious machines and drivers on the day.  Brent Wald took to the hazards with a lot of verve and left himself over on his door handles more than once. 

Use was made of the groves of trees around the site to create some tricky hazards threading between tree trunks. One was a series of circles of decreasing radius that defeated most people without steering brakes to skid themselves around. 

We also re-used one route used the last time we were at this property which stuck in your mind as being impossible at first sight.  It followed a narrow gulley to a tight turn between a cliff and a fence line and finished after a climb out.

You needed to cling onto the top of the bank before an off chamber turn straight into the  gorge section, praying you didn't roll, taking the tight corner and hitting the climb from a standstill

Prado life

Peter and Shirley Pope rejoined the series in their "do everything" Toyota Prado, the same truck they used to tour the East Coast with their club earlier this year. Peter started in a two stroke 800 cc Suzuki some 30 years ago and could tell a few stories.

When he competes he is extremely positive in his outlook and advice making him a pleasure to be with and typical of the "salt of the earth" people you find in 4WD clubs. Meanwhile Joe Stephens swapped his old Pajero for  a Jeep Wrangler but still caned the poor thing and you could hear it bouncing off the rev limiter from all over the site. 

Stephen Watchorn gave his dad a run for his money in their Class 2 Pajero that he was cross entered in, he and Mark using quite different lines over the same hazards. Pam Dransfield was working away on the farm all morning but in the afternoon she had time to watch a few hazards and gave some good advice to the competing drivers, " you need to use momentum before you use the throttle" for instance.

What a drag

The day finished with the "crowd pleaser" side by side drags as the speed hazard.  A chance to work out your grudge by careful choice of a slower opponent! This was run as a left and right course, straight line drag to a hill, turn over the hill and return, then run the other course. 

Baby Driver Grace rejoined Hintzy for this round after blowing us off for a Halloween disco the month before. Together they won the day with Marty a close second.  The next four places taken by Jeeps from both class 2 (limited modified) and class 3 (modified), again showing driver skill rather than vehicle modification is what you need.

Round 3 of the 2018/19 series is on in Wellington in February.

Event information, entry forms and series rules are on www.czctc.org.nz or post a question on the NZFWDA forum "Events" page.

Selected results

To read the full story in the February 2019 issue of NZ4WD go to Zinio.com (January 21) or purchase your own hard copy at the Adrenalin store.