Story & photos by Vicky Newport
We had all sorts of terrain and challenges at Cust, with mud, water, winch hills and ruts with a couple of stages where the teams had to do as many laps as possible in 30 minutes (or not).
I couldn't quite understand how these two worked, but there was certainly a lot of winching which was what we were here for. A few fell onto their sides, but most recovered and carried on.
Two Outlaw teams were out after their first stages due to electrical or mechanical issues, not a great start for them, and as the day progressed we had more teams out, some due to mechanicals, others breakages.
Stage 10 wasn't everyone's favourite with five DNFs and nine not even starting it. Most teams were done by around 3:30pm.
Sunday we were all back on site pretty early again with stages starting at 9.00am. In total everyone had to complete 14 stages. Some from Saturday had been joined together to become one plus there were a few new stages ready to go.
Because we were down on teams on Sunday it wasn’t taking long to get around the event, so we didn't really have any teams queuing and most finished by around 3:30pm.
By the time everyone had packed up and scraped some mud off it was time for the (on-site) prize giving.
Next up are rounds 3 and 4 of the Mainland Superwinch Challenge at the big Top of the South meeting between August 12 & 14. This year Top of the South doubles as the NZ1 event so we are expecting a few more North Island teams to join in the fun.
RESULTS
2016 MAINLAND SUPERWINCH CHALLENGE CUST JULY 09-10
1. Neil Albury/Chris Baird (Nelson) 1309 pts
To read the full story in the September 2016 issue of NZ4WD go to Zinio.com (August 22) or purchase your own hard copy at the Adrenalin store.