Between 7 and 10 of August 2008, Transylvania Off Road Club organised the sixth stage of the National Championship in the Baisorii Mountain resort. The Cluj Cup is, as are all the competitions in the race calendar, a Trophy/Trial competition, with 10% of the track on public roads and the rest of 90% in the wilderness of North West Transylvania, through a combination of long distance tracks and special stages that will reach an altitude of over 1700 meters.
Off road lovers covering Standard (unmodified factory four wheel drive cars), Open Class (4 point harnesses, helmets for both pilot and copilot and winch), Extreme (trucks specially designed for extreme competitions with front and rear winch, MT tyres, rollcages and sometimes engine transplants), ATV and Enduro classes participated, with clean vehicles and high hopes of scoring points in the championship. The event was the Thursday prologue, which set the starting order for the weekend of competition. Like all competitions in the Championship, it's navigation-based and not one based on speed, the co-pilot's task being extremely important throughout the whole event.
Following this, Friday morning found the teams starting on the tracks, in the hope that the difficulty of the tracks would not impose great problems on the cars or drivers, but stumbling upon the first special stage, which involved a steep hill climb for the Open Class and a descent on a tight valley with very dense vegetation casually called "the jungle". Unlike the expected weather which, by organization's words was supposed to be a stormy one, the dry soil helped the teams in the said stage, the use of the winches still being mandatory for success. Not even Open class escaped without events, mainly because one of the cars rolled over in a very tight spot, delaying the whole convoy for a good deal of time. Extreme Class had one vehicle roll over more than 10 times at a short distance from the starting line, but both occupants escaped with no bruises thanks to the rollcage.
Sunday seemed to end very quickly if we were to consider the speed of the quads and the ATV's but the tight and abrupt track proved to be more of an obstacle than expected for the cars. The super special stage vas common for both Open and Extreme Classes but, surprisingly Open drivers seemed to pass through the stage easier than Extreme class which made use of their winches more often than not, offering in the same time a spectacular display of technique to the 400 spectators gathered to watch the winner come into his rights.
Images Courtesy of Levo & Transsylvania Off Road Club.
Radu Tudoroiu
Radu Tudoroiu is a photographer and an editor for 4x4 Off Roads and other publications as well as an off-road enthusiast. Radu lives in Romania.
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