24 Hours TT Vila de Fronteira or simply “Fronteira”. It is the race that closes the off-road season in Portugal, despite not scoring for any national or international championship. The 24 Hours TT Vila de Fronteira is, in fact, an event that goes far beyond competition.
It is one of the highlights of all-terrain vehicles in Portugal, on a weekend when fans of «mud, earth and dust» hit the road, in an authentic pilgrimage, to the picturesque Alentejo town of Fronteira.
Objective? It's not just to watch the machines go by. There is a party beyond the party…
these are the testimonies
“I've been coming to Fronteira to see cars for five years now”, guarantees Edite Gouveia, who we found sitting in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the Alentejo plain, with only her youngest son in her arms and her daughter right next door , trying to protect himself from the cold. Annoyed? Not really.
Heavily jacketed and a few meters from the track where the cars pass, this Corucho says that “everyone at home likes speed, motorbikes, cars. Mainly my husband. We started by accompanying him and, for four or five years, we have always come”.
Little concerned about the extensive clouds of dust that pilots raise as they pass, Edite explains that, “usually, we go to the show zones. However, this year, when we arrived, there was a lot of confusion, so we decided to flee here, to a more open place”.
For the rest, “usually, we don't stay to see the whole race. We saw it on the day of the race, we stayed until around three or four in the morning, and then we returned home, because the trip is still far away”, she says, in front of her son's confirmation look.
"We only left here on Sunday!"
With night falling and after a few more kilometers covered, I find the first concentration of jeeps - either that or it was a gypsy camp such was not the party and the bonfires that contrasted with the calm of the Alentejo plains. Some of these jeeps, even flanked by a small tent or cover, and almost always with groups of people trying to protect themselves from the cold.
Near the runway, here already demarcated by a tape and with the GNR watching from a distance (at the time, there was already the news that a spectator had felt unwell, which even forced him to be evacuated by helicopter), a group of men, bundled up and around a fire, wait for the next competitor. With Paulo Loureiro, 49 years old, a passionate off-roader with a constant presence in Fronteira “for three years now”, remembering that “this group never fails! Plus one, minus one, we always stay until the end of the race”.
Coming from Lisbon, “we arrived today”, and, in the luggage compartment of the jeeps, “we brought food and drink”. Since, “because we are in a concert area, we had to pay €20 to be here. But it already includes wood for the fire!… ”.
"To sleep? If necessary, we sleep in the cars! But nobody here is thinking about sleeping…”, assures Paulo Loureiro.
All-terrain clubs are also part of the Frontier party
Later on and with the night advanced, the discovery of a real city on wheels. With more than a hundred all-terrain vehicles arranged in a kind of improvised parking lot, in the middle of the stubble and not far from the already impossible to see dirt track. Where, at intervals, the competitors passed.
“We are all members of Clube Terra-a-Terra, from Loures”, explained Pedro Luís, one of those responsible for organizing yet another TT Loures-Fronteira Tour, with which we came across. “We have been taking this tour for 11 years. This year we brought close to 200 cars. We left Loures on Friday, we almost always came along old roads, and only returned on Sunday, after the end of the race”.
Moreover, and also about this action, aimed only at club members, Pedro Luís explains that participants are obliged to pay a participation fee, which according to Car Ledger he found out to have been around €40, and that, basically, is intended “to cover the amount required by the ACP, so that we can settle here”. With the payment of this amount, participants also benefit from “meals, namely, two breakfasts, lunches and dinner snacks, in addition to parking next to the track, unlimited firewood, toilets, insurance and road-book for travel to coming and going.”
Everything, after all, to make what is one of the most emblematic off-road races on the national scene what everyone wants: a real and genuine party, which you feel like repeating.
If our words have not reached you, this gallery is “proven proof” that Fronteira is not just competition. That's it, and much more...
