Sure, it’s hard being a rally co-driver. You try taking your eyes off the road and reading from a notebook while being kicked, bucked and bounced along back country gravel roads at speed, and see how long that tasty BP servo steak and mince pie you had for lunch stays down!
While old mate behind the steering wheel gets to have all the fun, you’re trying to match the notes to the road in front of you, operate the Monit, making sure you don’t get lost between stages plus do a hundred and one other things someone who has never tried it themselves will never know.
So, you definitely have to have your wits about you.
Imagine, for a moment, however, that as well as the basic navigating you also had to get in and out of your ‘car’ at least two or three times a stage, often in knee-to-thigh-deep mud, to attach a winch rope to a tree and/or lift a heavy ground anchor and carry it – often uphill and usually on a mud surface made slick by those who have gone before you – to a point where you can ‘dig it in’ and attach the winch cable or rope to it.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to what has got to be the toughest motorsport category in New Zealand at the moment, the Winch Challenge.
As its name suggests, a ‘Winch Challenge’ is about winching. Sure, you have to drive a vehicle into and out of a ‘winch section’ stage. But if the driver and co-driver get through a section without having to winch at least once, the section is considered ‘too easy.’
Which is why the co-driver is in this case is responsible for at least 50% of the success of each two-person ‘team.’ Because each section is timed, and the clock continues to tick while the ‘winch-person’ (and yes there are several women contesting events here and overseas) does his or her job, speed is of the essence.
Like the 4×4 Trials I wrote about last week, the idea of creating events so hard you are left no option but to use a winch to get you out of a stage came from overseas. In this case, however, rather than Europe or the US, it was Malaysia’s epic, multi-day ‘Rainforest Challenge’ series plus a buoyant (winch) distributor-backed series in Australia which spurred interest in setting up ‘something similar’ here.
The magazine I now edit, NZ4WD, can take credit for helping get the concept up and running in this country, setting up the very first ‘Kiwi’ event in conjunction with the Auckland 4WD Club at a property near Horopito in the central North Island in 2000.
Initially competing teams were drawn from across the Off-Road/4WD spectrum. Since then, however, the sport has attracted its own dedicated cadre of followers. Particularly in the South Island where the Superwinch Mainland Winch Series seems to get bigger and better every year.
Not that you’d know if you weren’t a dedicated reader of NZ4WD magazine, or knew someone involved, however.
Most events, for instance, are held miles from anywhere, with some closed (i.e. for competitors and crews-only), and others so far off the beaten track that the only spectators are sheep, cows and the odd native Falcon (or Hawk).
Which is a shame, because in typical Kiwi fashion the sport has evolved to the point where all the serious pairings have purpose-built ‘trucks’ or ‘winch rigs’ and events from Dargaville in the north to Dunedin in the south attract as many as 50 entries.
It’s in the South Island where the sport is strongest right now, in large part to a group of Nelson-based enthusiasts. To give you an idea of how a typical Superwinch Mainland Winch Challenge series event runs click on following YouTube video and watch how the final round of the 2018 season at Waitati just north of Dunedin panned out. And yes (spoiler alert!) the first three of four stages of a lot of events here are run on the Friday night – the darkness adding another whole new dimension…as you can see in the video.
Current Superwinch Mainland Winch Series ‘King’ Scotty Newport started out as a co-driver (or winch man) under the tutelage of NZ 4×4 (and Jeep) scene ‘guru’ Andrew ‘Sav’ Saverley before building the first of two Jeep-based winch ‘trucks’ and taking over the driving duties.
There’s a real ‘collegial’ feel to each Superwinch Mainland Series event, with Scotty and most of the other leading contenders running pre-event ‘tutorials’ for newcomers as well as ‘what to look out for’ briefings for the marshals (who are usually new at each event).
It’s a real family affair, in fact, for the Newports, with Scotty’s wife Vicky working tirelessly in admin and publicity while the pair’s daughter is the official point scorer and keeper of records.
Vicky is also scrupulously fair in all the ‘round write-ups’ she does for NZ4WD magazine, working through each class so that every pair who win (or even do well) get a mention, often at the expense of the main event winner – who for the past two seasons has, more often than not, been husband Scotty.
Because it is such a specialised branch of our sport, it’s hard to get to see it for yourself, which is in stark contrast to other countries where – for instance – at rounds of both the Malaysian RFC and its international cousin, the Russian RFC, 50+ specialised vehicles entertain literally thousands of spectators in ‘publicity’ stages put on close to main centres before the ‘main event’ begins.
Which leads me to think that the next step for the sport here is to pair up with a promotor and create a TV and spectator-friendly stand-alone event, like Dan Cowper’s Suzuki Extreme 4×4 Challlenge I wrote about last week, or – something like – the Red Bull Romaniacs off-road motorcycle race held in Romania each year.
Before the big Red Bull-backed ultra-enduro starts, there’s a prologue in the event’s host city over a course of man-made objects which sets the scene (as far as difficulty and general hard-arsed-ness) for the week of extreme riding that follows.
Before the next Manukau Winch Challenge, it wouldn’t be hard, for instance, to create a winch-prologue in downtown Manukau City, before the field made a mass exodus for the main venue out Onewhero way (far north-western Waikato).
Or before the Makikihi round of the Superwinch Mainland Winch Series you could put together an obstacle course in (or very close to) Timaru’s seaside Caroline Bay recreational area.
4×4 Trials livewire Dan Cowper has proved that there is both a decent-sized live, as well as commercially viable TV, audience for home grown off-road action.
And as a colleague of long-standing told me once, ‘it there’s one of anything in any marketplace, there’s room for two!’
Speaking of which, next week my column is going to be on Kiwis doing big things business-wise overseas……
Until then check out YouTube for more videos, or head to www.nz4wd.co.nz and hunt out the Coming Events page.
If conventional motorsport is leaving you looking for something a little more real – or rather, raw – watching a Winch Challenge could be just the tonic you need!
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