The Tuff Truck Challenge is an offroad 4x4
rock crawling
Rock crawling is an extreme form of Off-roading, off-road driving using specialized vehicles ranging from stock to highly modified, to overcome obstacles. In rock crawling, drivers typically drive highly modified four-wheel-drive vehicles such ...
event held since 2001. The event has always been held at a private property/farming land in
Milbrodale in the
Hunter Valley
The Hunter Region, also commonly known as the Hunter Valley, Newcastle Region, or simply Hunter, spans the region in northern New South Wales, Australia, extending from approximately to north of Sydney. It contains the Hunter River and its ...
of NSW, Australia.
The event runs for 3 days with spectators camping. It was traditionally held near or on the Easter break, however has been moved to a weekend in September from 2019.
Over the weekend teams, made up of a driver and navigator, must attempt to compete a number of courses marked out though rocks, trees and soil. Teams gain points the further they progress through the course, but lose points for a variety of errors (such as, using reverse gear, winching, touching the bunting or cones, etc.). Each course has a time limit but often vehicles breakdown, rollover or get stuck midway before they are able to complete the course. While there is a set time limit to complete the course, there is no points advantage for finishing the course in a quicker time - it's not a race and making it so would change the categorisation of the event requiring a different safety protections for the competitors, staff and spectators. As the event is about low-speed technical crawling, spectators can get relatively close to the course with a high degree of safety.
History
Initially, competing vehicles were required to be road-worth and registered with their various state's motor registries. Over the years this rule was removed as vehicles became modified beyond what was legally allowed on public roads to complete the harder course layouts. Also, road rules would not have allowed the roll-cage safety requirements that are now in the rules. Vehicles must still be based on original road-going vehicles and contain a portion of original chassis and visual look.
The event is currently run by previous multi-time winner,
Peter Antunac through his events company 'Tuff Events & Promotions Australia Pty Ltd'.
He took over the event management in 2010 after winning the event in his highly modified Toyota Landcruiser the year before. The event was originally developed by the On All 4s 4WD Club in 2001, however, after the 2002 event, the club no longer had the resources to run it. A group of members from the Suzuki 4WD Club of NSW and ACT formed Tuff Events and Promotions Pty Ltd and ran the event from 2005 until 2009.
In 2015 the event featured on Australian sport television program
RPM
Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or r⋅min−1) is a unit of rotational speed (or rotational frequency) for rotating machines.
One revolution per minute is equivalent to hertz.
Standards
ISO 80000-3:2019 def ...
in a segment with
Kate Peck. In the same year, the same team behind the event started a 2nd event called "King of the Hunter" as the "under license" version of
King of the Hammers from America. Event Director Peter Antunac competed in the ULTRA4 class winning all 4 races.
Event statistics
See also
References
External links
*{{Official website, https://tufftruck.com.au/
Off-roading
Motorsport in New South Wales
Motorsport in Australia
Motorsport competitions in Australia