Musaios Extreme Adventure @ Buzau
September 6. - 9. 2007
This weekend the town of Buzau, a small mountain settlement in Romania was home
to the one of the last major off road contests for this year. As
most of the competitions here, this one emphasized very strongly on
navigation skills of the copilot, pilot’s driving skills as well as
a good relationship between the two members.
Late Thursday night the central plaza, which was
surrounded by an orange plastic fence, started to fill up with off
road cars, assistance cars, motorbikes and ATV’s. Since the Musaios
competition has sections for almost everything with an engine
divided according to the difficulty, in this second year of
competition many amateurs turned up with an ATV, car or motorbike to
try their luck.
With little delay, the next morning engines
started to roar in the improvised parking lot. Bike engines, loud
and high, 3.0 petrols, 4,2 diesels and 5,7 hemi’s fired up for the
race to come. The briefing, as well as everything involving the
raced highlighted what off road is all about: having fun, being
safe, keeping people around you and your car safe, reason for which
a 200 point penalty was imposed for speeding on the parts of the
rally that were on national roads, and last but not least,
friendship.
Everybody rushed to their vehicles and left the main
starting point with the smell of burning rubber, in a rush to get to
the official starting point, get their terratrips reset and charge
into the woods.
First day of contest seemed fairly easy with one
minor problem. The Open and Extreme categories for cars had a
special stage which one of the cars missed. This caused a stir which
finally led to the whole special stage being annulled and cars being
informed to jump it and continue the rally raid stage. There was no
rain in the first day so very few cars used winches, relying solely
on the second gear in high to attack difficult climbs or trees that
have fallen and have been left on the track.
In the improvised camp
at the end of day one, I found the time to inspect all the cars and
gather information. Most cars parked there were sacred off road
monsters. I saw Toyota’s
model 70, quite plenty, which had great timing for the day, with the
exception of one 70 which rolled over and seemed unable to continue
at the end of day one. Also scattered around were what seemed to
have been a few Landys 90 and were now 4,0 diesels with 70 or 80’s
axles. None the less excellent runners. To be added to the list
plenty of Mercedes’ famous G Klasse, some broken, some bent, some…
very extremely cut and dent to fit Simex 35’s and various types of
rollcages.
The star of the show was what used to be a Jeep Wrangler.
As I approached it I noticed something interesting which firstly
seemed to be an unusually high lifting kit but at a closer
inspection turned out to be a pair of Unimog axles fitted for the
5,7 hemi I mentioned earlier. 1…2…..6 reducing gears on one chassis.
Excellent rollcage, front and rear heavy duty suspensions, front and
rear winches and so on. Everything you may need on an off road
vehicle. Ironically they announced that they retired from the race
due to the fact that they rolled over and broken a Landy’s radiator
in the process.
Second day announced itself to be a harder one as
clouds gathered informing us that we might be seeing a little bit of
British weather later in the day. Everybody without a hangover was
already checking out the vehicles, making last minute adjustments,
or just savoring their morning coffee.
The race started and so the
competitors left for the second day of race, in the
Forrest. Compared to
the first day where most of the distances were over 500 yards,
today’s roadbook was created with the sole purpose of testing the
team’s navigation skills. There were also some zones where one could
switch to fifth gear and speed up, but most zones implied fast reset
of the terratrips, fast abilities to read and understand the
roadbooks and faster abilities to inform the pilot of his next turn.
As promised, rain started to fall around 2 o’clock and the Open
section turned Extreme. In only two hours the casualties were 4 bent Panhard rods, about a dozen cut, exploded or otherwise flat tires
and a handful of cars stuck in clay. By four o’clock all the cars in
the Extreme section were out on the open road. The organizers
announced that the race is to be stopped due to bad weather and a
decision is to be taken regarding the competition. Back in Buzau, cars kept coming the whole night as rain
poured down on to the course. The last cars arrived in the mornings
and drivers described a wonderful night slept in the cold rain with
the car stuck in a place where even the GPS would get lost.
Finally the third and final day came, bringing
along a special stage which emphasized pilot’s driving skills
exclusively. Motorbikes, ATV’s and cars raced across the 1,5 mile
track to get the fastest time and title for best performance. With
the support of the local police and city hall, this year’s contest
turned out to be a big plus for off road fans all over as well as
for the community which expect another competition of the same sort
in the near future.
R.T.
4x4OffRoads.com
