Information

The Europe Challenge Tour 2009 is a car driving-event for everyone who likes to drive a car. It is certainly not a race-rally. The main thing in this Tour is not speed, but skills, good navigation and anticipating. Because of this participation on the Europe Challenge Tour 2009 is possible for everyone and not only for those with a rally-license.

Date Event
The Europe Challenge Tour 2009 will take place from .......... 2009. The location for the departure and finish are yet to be decided.

The Drive
The Europe Challenge Tour will start in the Netherlands and will navigate you through a minimum of 10 Europese countries. The Europe Challenge Tour is about good navigation, finding the best and most beautiful route, teambuilding and safe driving. The Europe Challenge Tour is a challenge for an equip of 2 persons which will be driving through all of Central Europe. Speed is not a criterion, but the distance of the stages are sometimes consequently long that you will have to drive all night and day and because of that it will test your persistence. As a team you have to take care for your own vehicle and you have to choose your own equipment. Will you use a navigation-device of will you use the road maps? Will you ride on diesel, LPG or gas?

In short:
De Europe Challenge Tour is not a holiday trip in which a lot of time and place is reserved for sight-seeing. Instead, you can enjoy the view you sometimes get when you are on the road. In 6 days you will travel around 5000 kilometers. For a part the Tour is driving via swinging mountain passes and you can enjoy nice panoramas and spectacular abysses. There are some ‘resting days’ and on these days all teams can participate on activities, such as rafting, downhill mountain biking, paragliding, golf, tennis and maybe a classification test. The Europe Challenge Tour contains a number of stages. By smart navigation the best route can be found with observance of the legitimate traffic rules. Apart from that there will be a number of classification tests that will also be included in the final classification. Before the Tour the participants will not know which route is to be driven. The organisation will determine the amount and length of the stages. Shortly before the departure every equip will be given the first checkpoint. Each stage will contain a number of checkpoints. Following these checkpoints, you can determine your own route. The checkpoints will be communicated to the by the so called ‘BACKOFFICE’.
The checkpoints can be found on road maps or you look it up via a navigation system or a laptop with route planner. Subsequently you will calculate the shortest or fastest route to the checkpoint.

Speed
The Europe Challenge Tour is, like we mentioned before, not a speed contest or a rally. It is a challenge. It is about skills, good navigation, endurance and anticipating. The contestants are obliged to the maximum speed of the relevant country. Ofcourse, the Tour is competitive. The competitive element is in finding the best route and to do the stage in the time that is the closest to the time that is determined by the organisation. Of course the local maximum speeds have been taken into account. The organisation will check the contestants on violations of the maximum speed. In case of heavy or repeated violation of the maximum speed contestants will be disqualified for the stage concerning and/or the final classification.  Driving fast is of no use because you will have to approach the time determined by the organisation. Checking of the travelled route and speeds will be by meanings of a track- and trace system. This apparature will be built in every car. Subsequently, you can accurately follow every equip. The home front, participants and others interested can follow the performances of the equips, because you can be live followed via the Internet. The BackOffice will undertake action when a team comes into trouble.

Media
The Europe Challenge Tour is getting media-attention from regional and national radio and TV and newspapers. The individual teams can also take care for their own media-attention in their region. Because of this the event is highly interesting for sponsors. As a team you can recruit your own sponsors, but make sure you take into account that some space has to be reserved for event-sponsors on your car (see the image below, red is reserved for event-sponsors). .