Within the Trail Hero event is a feature called the Trail Breaker Challenge. This is a cumulative idea from Myself, Jesse Haines, Tracy Jordan, and Jason Paule. For the most part we have kicked this idea around over the last 5 years and I decided to pull the trigger to move forward with this concept...
The Idea:
Our #1 goal when thinking of this event was to reach back into our roots of trail wheeling and find out what makes a great driver. To do this I asked a few very skilled drivers what their thoughts were. The number one answer was not just being able to drive the line, but see the line and feel it as you drive.
One thing that has displaced much of this process in Competitive Rock Crawling is the ability to watch the driver ahead of you, see what their line is and if it works. Once the line is figured out, it almost becomes a game of copy-cat driving and much of what separates teams are mistakes and vehicles.
Therefore, to find out who is the best, Drivers will not be allowed to watch one another on the course. Think old school early rock crawling days like Warn Nationals in Las Cruces. The canyon wound around and made it nearly impossible for teams to watch each other on course.
Next is how to score the event. A frustrating portion of Rock Crawling is the human element. Judging an event is literally one of the hardest things to do, and just like a football game, there is always an eventual error the interpretation of the rules, or something didn't get caught.
In the same sense, if it is based on time throughout the trail, it becomes a rock race, and takes a different type of skill. When this happens vehicles often break, clog up trails, lengthen the event, and usually it happens on the more flat ground rather than the real obstacle.
Both ways of scoring the event work well for their respective types of motorsports. Both KOH, W.E.ROCK, and Old School have done well with their formats and I love the excitement each bring to their own version of our sport. I for one, never want to compete against either Dave, Big Rich, or Craig. Instead what I want to do is Complement their efforts and focus on our roots as well as give the hidden talent somewhere in the trails an honest chance to show themselves.
To score this event we are using the element of time and points, but we will only score the vehicle while it is trying the actual obstacle. Each obstacle completed will reward the team the point value given to that obstacle based on difficulty. Overall Time from each course would be the tie breaker. Therefore time would start once the front tires touched the "Rock" and end when the vehicle has completely made the single Obstacle. If the vehicle cannot complete the obstacle in the allotted time, then they will receive a Zero points, max time and then be timed for their attempt at the bypass (Which is also not easy).
What confines the vehicle to the course is the obstacle itself, there is no boundary, cones, etc. With this we believe that this will not turn into a rock race as it will take definitive skill and slow movement to actually climb the obstacle. As much as these are waterfalls and obstacles, they will surely need to be driven with precision, which cannot be done with speed.
Drivers will be able to walk the trail for one hour prior to the start, and the order will be randomly drawn by teams the night prior at our Kickoff Party.
With all this, and the response that we have received for this feature, we will be expanding the event to 10 total positions. 9 of which will be hand selected by myself, and the last position to be voted on by the members of Pirate4x4.com.
The group that Pirate votes on will be selected by the drivers of the event plus myself, 10 total candidates.
I look forward to hosting such a unique event with the help from the industry and the drivers and hope this allows us to reach into our past and create something that can be really fun to watch and partake in for the future.
What do you think?
The Idea:
Our #1 goal when thinking of this event was to reach back into our roots of trail wheeling and find out what makes a great driver. To do this I asked a few very skilled drivers what their thoughts were. The number one answer was not just being able to drive the line, but see the line and feel it as you drive.
One thing that has displaced much of this process in Competitive Rock Crawling is the ability to watch the driver ahead of you, see what their line is and if it works. Once the line is figured out, it almost becomes a game of copy-cat driving and much of what separates teams are mistakes and vehicles.
Therefore, to find out who is the best, Drivers will not be allowed to watch one another on the course. Think old school early rock crawling days like Warn Nationals in Las Cruces. The canyon wound around and made it nearly impossible for teams to watch each other on course.
Next is how to score the event. A frustrating portion of Rock Crawling is the human element. Judging an event is literally one of the hardest things to do, and just like a football game, there is always an eventual error the interpretation of the rules, or something didn't get caught.
In the same sense, if it is based on time throughout the trail, it becomes a rock race, and takes a different type of skill. When this happens vehicles often break, clog up trails, lengthen the event, and usually it happens on the more flat ground rather than the real obstacle.
Both ways of scoring the event work well for their respective types of motorsports. Both KOH, W.E.ROCK, and Old School have done well with their formats and I love the excitement each bring to their own version of our sport. I for one, never want to compete against either Dave, Big Rich, or Craig. Instead what I want to do is Complement their efforts and focus on our roots as well as give the hidden talent somewhere in the trails an honest chance to show themselves.
To score this event we are using the element of time and points, but we will only score the vehicle while it is trying the actual obstacle. Each obstacle completed will reward the team the point value given to that obstacle based on difficulty. Overall Time from each course would be the tie breaker. Therefore time would start once the front tires touched the "Rock" and end when the vehicle has completely made the single Obstacle. If the vehicle cannot complete the obstacle in the allotted time, then they will receive a Zero points, max time and then be timed for their attempt at the bypass (Which is also not easy).
What confines the vehicle to the course is the obstacle itself, there is no boundary, cones, etc. With this we believe that this will not turn into a rock race as it will take definitive skill and slow movement to actually climb the obstacle. As much as these are waterfalls and obstacles, they will surely need to be driven with precision, which cannot be done with speed.
Drivers will be able to walk the trail for one hour prior to the start, and the order will be randomly drawn by teams the night prior at our Kickoff Party.
With all this, and the response that we have received for this feature, we will be expanding the event to 10 total positions. 9 of which will be hand selected by myself, and the last position to be voted on by the members of Pirate4x4.com.
The group that Pirate votes on will be selected by the drivers of the event plus myself, 10 total candidates.
I look forward to hosting such a unique event with the help from the industry and the drivers and hope this allows us to reach into our past and create something that can be really fun to watch and partake in for the future.
What do you think?
