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Hard-core winch challenge action was the mission statement for the 2007 Superwinch Tuff Truck Assault held over four days at the Hidden 4wd Park in the Bay of Plenty – the second 4x4 Challenges sanctioned winch challenge event for 2007.

21 competition teams, their support crews, and the media turned up to face the 20 stages of winch warfare that organiser Pete Weatherly and his dedicated volunteers had planned. This included Tony White and Mike Graham hot off their win at the Norwest Winch Challenge and past winners Simon and Grant Guy in Simon’s seasoned GQ.

The battle kicked off with three night stages on the Thursday night. Winching, high speed and tight technical sections were all featured and set the tome for what was to be a diverse competition.

Adding to the diversity was a special ‘Outlaw’ class for non road-registered vehicles, which saw four teams, most with trials type vehicles, front up to see if they could beat the winch challenge competitors at their own game. Needless to say, they all learnt a few new tricks and tried their best to place up amongst the pros.

Friday’s six stages caused their fair share of carnage. Steve Reed and Dion Kerr held the record with a frenzy of CV breakages giving their support crew a real workout. But they were not alone with many teams falling victim to the tough stages and being forced to make use of their spare parts.

The heaven’s opened on Saturday morning which made things all the more difficult serving up two rollovers, both by brothers Simon and Grant Guy. Grant (the co-driver) was not too impressed having to exit the cab through the drivers window twice on the same day!

The highlight stage for Saturday put the teams down through a nasty gully with two drop offs. The constant rain had made this stage a real challenge and saw several teams result to using brute force to get through. No doubt the most spectacular attempt was by Raana Horan, who dug the right-hand side of his Nissan into the bank under power and almost instantly turned 90 degrees. Maybe not the best way to make it through the stage, but a real crowd pleaser.

Saturday night saw a rerun of Thursday’s long night stage in a reverse. Covering over 8km it was a big hit with the competitors and is the type of night stage that this event has become renowned for.

Sunday, the fourth and final day of competition opened with the news that Owen Fillery’s newly built FJ Cruiser was suffering from engine issues and would have to be towed to each stage. Three stages were set to determine who would be crowned champion of the Tuff Truck Assault. With several teams well up in the points, the pressure was on them to perform. All the teams gave it their all and made their last ditch attempt to improve their placing.

So after battle had ceased and all the scores were tallied up, third place went to Donald Preston and Roger McKay, second to Owen Fillery and Dave Morrison and the win to Tony White and Mike Graham in their refined Nissan GQ, otherwise known as Shrmin. Interestingly enough, the weapon of choice for the Tuff Truck Assault was the hydraulic winch taking out all of the top 3 placings.

The next event on the NZ calendar is the infamous Rotorua Winch Challenge in August where all eyes will be on Team Shrmin to see if they can continue their winning ways and take out the hat-trick.