Venture FJ Cruiser: G6 Certified!

Fri, 16th November 2018

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Earlier this year, the (in)famous Brian Parker of Recon G6 fame took his latest creation, Parkerfest, to the wilds of Italy! This event was one of just 3 events worldwide where drivers would be able to "certify" their trucks, rigs and parts as G6 tough! 

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G6 certification isn't an easy thing to achieve: to get certified, the truck and its driver must complete a grueling 12 hours of driving over crazy-tough terrain, navigating a custom-made course laid out by Parker himself. For the last year or so, very eager (and very fit!) scale truck drivers have been hitting marathon distances of 26.2 miles and much farther, turning the G6 12 hour into a real footrace for the very quickest. 

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While it's always been a dream for one of the HPI staff to attend a G6 or Parkerfest event and get the Venture certified, other events and date clashes have always conspired against us - most recently, the massive HPI Racing effort at Speedmachine prevented us from attending the UK leg of the Recon G6 challenge, and things didn't work out for Italy, either! However, a group of very enthusiastic and eager scaler fans from Romania wanted to attend...they just needed a bit of help! 

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Team Transilvania (or the "Dracula Team" as Parker called them!) consisted of 6 hardcore RC fans from around the the town of Cluj Napoca, in Romania: Catalin Fernea, Catalin Bora, Horatiu Bora, Cristian Marin, and Horatiu Chindris and his father. Once they heard about the Parkerfest event at the Maggiora Off-Road Arena in Italy, it didn't take long for them to organize things to prep their trucks and plan the trip. 

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Two months of preparation went into making the trip a reality, and a journey of over 1700km (over 1000 miles!) was planned from Romania, through Hungary and Slovenia and ending up in Italy. As the first-ever Romanian team to attend a G6 event, they didn't want to miss out! 

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HPI Racing provided a couple of fresh Venture FJ Cruiser trucks for the G6 effort, making sure everyone on the team had a truck to drive. In addition to the fresh trucks and the Ventures already on the team, more parts and accessories were ordered and installed, spares and tools were organized into parts boxes, the Ventures were taken apart, checked over and over again, prepped with greases and oils, and declared ready! The team had custom shirts made up with the Romanian flag and Team Transylvania logos - this was definitely a 110% effort! 

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Of course, with all this effort going into the trucks, it couldn't be just the 3 or 6 hour challenges to be attempted - it was going to be 12 hours or bust! For most of the team, though, this presented a particular challenge, since the average age of the team was well over 30 years...so a training trail drive was undertaken to see how everyone would hold up. After 6 hours on the trail, the trucks were fine and the team was feeling ready to take on another 6 hours. Confidence was high and the preparations for the 12 hour trail challenge continued! 

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The team was excited to meet the legend himself: Parker! A big personality on social media, with livestreams from his phone at every event, his energy is infectious and his enthusiasm undiminished after years of putting on bigger and bigger scale off-road events around the world! 

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Parkerfest took up a whole weekend, starting on the Thursday before with crazy scale challenges for the most extreme scaler fans. The main event was the G6 challenge, with drivers setting off in stages depending on if they're running the 3, 6, or 12 hour distances. The 12 hour challenge started at 12 noon, so it would be ending at midnight! 

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The trail was spectacular, well-organized and diverse, leading drivers and their rigs through forests, mud, and water and over asphalt and stones of all shapes and sizes. In addition to the terrain itself, muscle cramps, pain, and the blazing hot sun conspired to slow the team down. After 8 hours, Horatiu took a well-deserved break before powering through the final 4 hours to finish with his box-stock Venture! 

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Team Transylvania would like to thank all who supported the team of 6: Andrei from HPI Racing Romania, Frank from HPI Racing, HPI for the 2 new Venture kits, and last but not least Brian Parker who gave them the chance to take part in such a big event, with people from all over the world. They're already making plans to be back next year!

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