Romanian Extreme Adventure 2008

 

The latest stage of the National Off Road Championship of Romania took place at the beginning of this month at Buzau, in the heart of the country. For a period of seven days straight auto, moto, ATVs and Side-by-Sides competed in both Open and Extreme classes in another very long, demanding but rewarding off road competitions around.

Starting Sunday, the 29th of June, the trophy-style race will, according to one of it's organizers, Florin Radu, test each team's navigational, driving and team spirit skills on a 1680 kilometers track of extreme off road racing, through very beautiful scenery and various altitudes, with five days of full race, one day with a special stage and a day off for fixing the trucks and recovering. The trucks and the drivers will face exclusively natural obstacles, various types of terrain from hills up to the Penteleu mountain heights as well as the relatively high temperature differences in the possibility of rain falling during the event.

Even if, at a first look, the numbers might seem discouraging for an average person, more than 200 contestants have signed up for the contest, a good deal of them never managing to finish. Unlike previous competitions in Romania, the Romanian Extreme Adventure brought a change in the way the race is done, competitors for Extreme class, who were fighting for the title of Romanian Off Road Champion had to abandon the traditional 2 car teams in favor of individual car scheme.

This decision was taken in this direction for various reasons, of which the most important was the danger of breaking down. Florin Radu declared for 4x4offroads.com: "Without doubt this is a beneficial change for the race. The logic of this type of individual car race is that, if a team of two cars work and train and put money in the car for a long period of time, looking forward for this competition, it would be a pity to have one of the trucks break down and the team have to abandon with a perfectly good car. This is, in my opinion the most fair way to proceed in these kind of competitions".

Because the race puts an accent on team work, having one full day of pure azimuth navigation, done exclusively by compass and terra trip reading, which demands very good navigation skills. The other days saw Extreme, Open as well as Side – By – Sides vehicles having to navigate with the aid of the Terra Trip and road book indications, with no previous road recognition and ATVs and motorcycles navigating by means of GPS traces, with marked intermediate refueling points for the former, due to the small autonomy in comparison to the cars.

The last day of race, when the teams returned from the bivouac in the forest where the camp was located for the whole length of the race, the final special stage, the trial, benefited from the most spectators, who came to see the surviving vehicles negotiating their way through an extremely rough special stage to the finish. Night soon fell over Buzau and an evening of entertainment took place, which also involved the prize giving ceremony and the promise of a recurring competition next year.