Nomad Challenge: Tires

June 27, 2024 – USA: The Third Weekly Challenge of the 2024 edition of the Nomad Overland Rally focused on tires — the only part of the vehicle that actually makes contact with the road. We thought this would be a good opportunity to check out how much our Teams know about their tires.

The format was multiple choice and the questions ranged from really easy to more nuanced, covering basics such as understanding the labeling of a tire, airing down, tire construction, selection and maintenance.

Not surprisingly, the Nomad Teams did pretty well on this one overall. Quite a few teams were able to capture all the available points, and it was a good confidence-builder after the more difficult map-reading Challenge of Week Two.

The Weekly Challenges are one of the four pillars of the event and competitors can earn up to 100 points each week for completing the Challenge questions online. The Challenges also provide a way for all the teams to stay engaged over the whole ten weeks, even when they are not out exploring on Overland Stages. Each Week’s Challenge focuses on a different aspect of overland travel or outdoor skills — sometimes the competitors will have to do something offline in order to answer the questions and other times they just need to respond to multiple choice knowledge-checks. The teams are always free to research answers or find tutorials to help them complete the tasks prior to submitting their Challenges and once each Challenge “closes” they can consult the “correct” answers and explanations — turning it into a defacto learning opportunity.