Every year in the end of April the surroundings of Topusko are speckled with a great variety of off road cars: It’s Croatia Trophy time! Off road racing teams from a lot of different countries are competing for the famous tree-trunk-with-marker, Croatia Trophy 2016 will be a tough challenge but in the first place a lot of fun and friendship.
On Thursday it is time for the show start in the town of Topusko and after a speech from the mayor all cars are heading to the prologue terrain. It turns out to be the same spot as last year, but still a totally different prologue.
It can easily be called ‘jump stage’ because that is what many competitors do, right away on the first water crossing. Nico Wijnalda does it, Hans Turksma does it, Willem Vellinga does it and Mario Bijeljencevic does it double: his car is landing backwards in the creek! They winch it back on its wheels and finish the stage like nothing has happened – cool!
Then we see Fritz Becker in the Trophy Class, already not so steady on the second water crossing but a little bit later the car ends on its side in cold water. The cold does not only come from below – it starts to rain and many of us will remember the extremely wet edition of 2014. We all hope it won’t be like that at Croatia Trophy 2016 but none of us can change the weather so we’ll just deal with it.
When we leave the terrain – soaking wet and cold to the bone – Gordan Krota says to me: I bet now you don’t like being in Croatia so much anymore!! Guess what: he is wrong!
Results Trophy class
- Whitman / Marsden
- Eibensteiner/Deutshmann
- Magyar/Kovacs
Results Adventure class
- Purga/Junkin
- Mere/Lippasaar
- Bression/Louis
Today the first roadbook and hopefully another report!
Photo and text – Inge Bloeming
Published in Extreme4X4.eu