We thought the third round of this year’s Superwinch Challenge was wet. If anything though, the fourth round at Nelson topped it. Vicky Newport explains.

As usual the weather played its part right up to the Nelson event starting.

The weeks prior when stages were being built, marked and played on were blessed with typical Nelson weather. The Nelson 4 Wheel Drive Club has a core group of guys and girls who gave up their weekends, days, hours and even put on club play days planning these stages. Unfortunately with the weather on the day a few of the stages blew out a bit more than they expected. In saying that none of the stages were canned.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Friday the 13th of September and 16 teams rolled into Nelson. By 5.00pm most were there with more than half camping on site. Thank you Bowaters Toyota for the two marquees. They were very much needed and appreciated. Thanks too, to Megan and Ocean Lodge for the ‘Meals on Wheels’ which arrived at around 5:15pm, with everyone getting a hot meal before starting.

First test

It didn’t get dark until 6:30pm so – with an hour to kill I thought we could have a bit of fun to see who had the fastest winch... or the best co-driver. Some thought it was a conspiracy to break winches but most teams played along as it was only a bit of fun after all. They had to set a ground anchor then dead winch 30 metres to the end, put the ground anchor away and be back in the truck with seat belt on. 

First up were the PTO – Hydraulic winches. Nathan and Brock roared out over the start line but their ground anchor didn’t hold. Next in line were the Goodmans, side by side all the way to the end, with Lance over the line first but Stan’s co-driver back in the seat first. So Stan and Chris took out that test. Next up was the Electric Winches where Brock and Nick got over the finish line first. 

The Clubman guys had three teams. Magoo and Ben nearly had it but cheated by driving the last metre! Next over was Trev and Grant but they weren’t at prize giving so we gave it to John and Tyra. Check out the Facebook page for the videos, it was a lot of fun!

Night stages

After drivers’ briefing the teams were sent to their start stages from 6.30pm. Four were planned, they were long stages too, so the idea was plenty of seat time with minimal need for winching... with one exception, Nathan and Daniel, who started their first stage and within basically 50m had winched twice. Then they realised they had not engaged four-wheel drive! A genuine ‘bugger!’ moment if ever I have seen or heard of one.

Otherwise the night stages were pretty much over by 10:30pm. A few trucks needed repairs, Nick Aymes needed a transfer case and Mike Holmes had steering problems. Also Andrew Garrett smashed into a tree at full speed and broke his steering on their first stage. Joel didn’t give up though, and the father/son team had it fixed and carried on to complete all four of the Friday night stages.

Afterwards, and with a lot of people camping on site we had a wee social thing happening, with a couple of fires going and a lot of chit-chat... though it still ended up a fairly early night.

Most of the night stages crossed through the day stages so a couple of organisers (Magoo and Dredgy) had to go around all the stages and re-peg what they could for day stages. 

In hindsight it probably would have been a better idea to do that early in the morning, not at 11:00pm on Friday night as they had a wee lay down on one of the stages. They recovered themselves though and got back to the pits around 1.00am.

Then it rained... and rained

I heard the first vehicle arrive at 6.30am on Saturday morning. It had rained most of the night and it was still raining rather heavy by this stage.

All the stages were checked, and a couple of changes made but mostly they were running with what they had marked out. It’s a hard call for the organisers when the weather changes so drastically but it is what it is. We had 10 stages for Open and Outlaw and nine for Clubman.

Outlaw Class

There were 11 teams in Outlaw but on Saturday they were down to 10. Nick was out. He couldn’t fix the Suzuki. Everyone else was all go.

Mike Holmes (Blenheim) had a new co-driver (Richard Stec) in the Hilux. Mike thought he had fixed his steering but it wasn’t playing ball most of the day with three dnfs from the four day stages they started. 

In contrast, Mike and Tom (Dunedin) in the Buggy had a good day. They managed to drive all 10 stages with no DNFs. They did lose their ground anchor on a stage early in the day and Didn’t realise until about the same time a marshal found it!

Andrew and Joel (ChCh) got three day stages done before their buggy was on the Trailer, completing a total of seven stages.

Like Mike and Tom from Dunedin, Andy and Tom (ChCh) in what we call the Moonbuggy had a great day. They won Stage seven and drove the final part of Stage five to complete all stages with no DNFs.

Fellow Cantabrians Brent and Cole (ChCh) had no issues on their first two day stages only for disaster to strike in the third, somehow managing to snap the chassis near the front lower link mount which allowed the diff to rotate around and snap the coilovers, triple bypasses and drive shaft. 

Before this Brent and now Auckland-based co-driver Cole had won three of the four stages they has started. But as someone said, when Brent breaks the Ultra 4 he really breaks it.

Stan and Chris (Wellington) in the orange Land Cruiser completed all the stages and had no DNFs, a result which should put Stan up in the top three for the series points.

Lance and Danny (Wellington) in the Blue Land Cruiser started 13 of the stages but had three DNFs. That could have been four, as well, as on Stage 5 they came pretty close to a DNF. However, with only four minutes left on the clock Lance decided he’d give it his all, and with a bit of anger or frustration behind the wheel he managed to drive to the end of stage. It was a 30min DNF but they got there in 28:47 min. It was awesome to watch. The drive of the day for me.

Michael and Tom (Wellington) in the orange Suzuki started and completed all 14 stages.

Michael beat Stan in round 2 and I think that was his goal this weekend also. Michael has been competing in the odd round of the Superwinch Mainland Challenge since before he was 18 years old. He’s still not 20 and he’s up there with the older competitors already.

Hopefully we will see him enter into the Series one season soon.