Experience team from West Country take top honours at this year’s global TREK competition

Sixteen teams from across the world went head-to-head at this year’s Land Rover Experience TREK event, held at our flagship experience centre Eastnor Castle. New for this year was the inclusion of Jaguar driving events, which took place at Fen End.

Team West Country’s Freddie Oldfield and Ross Hockenhull saw off team South Africa in a tense finale which saw the Jaguar and Land Rover experience instructors compete alongside each other for the first time, to claim the title of winners.

Freddie said: “With the West Country having done so well at Trek over the last few years, we felt a little bit of pressure when we turned up, but having completed the challenges and coming first is a relief to have fulfilled it.

“The whole event has been amazing, especially bringing Jaguar in, as it gave me some experience I have never had and gave Ross experiences in Land Rovers he has never had before and we worked well together.”

Ross added that it was a brilliant experience and that all the teams were superb to work with and learn from, saying: “We have had a great time. I have learnt so much from Freddie and the others over the three days and somehow working well together, Freddie and I, have got to top spot.”

The 32 competitors from across the world went head-to-head in 24 challenges across three days of events starting with Jaguar-focussed track driving at Fen End which included tackling a smart cone course, fault finding and drifting and finishing at Eastnor Experience Centre with extreme off-roading courses, navigating a zorb ball through gates using a Discovery Sport and a night trek through the forest.

Being the first time that Jaguar had been included into TREK, the activities used the expertise of both sets of instructors to allow the tasks to reach the limits of each brands vehicles to show their true capability.

Sarah Batten, Network Training Manager for Jaguar Land Rover Experience said the Trek ethos of learn, share and develop has been stronger this year with the mix of both Jaguar and Land Rover instructors, adding:

“I don’t know why we were so concerned beforehand, as they have a much greater appreciation of what each other goes through. The Land Rover guys have a better understanding of how hard it is to instruct in a vehicle on a track and vice versa. The Jaguar guys got a better appreciation for the level of driving the off-road team has, in particular, during the night drive where we got stuck and had to recover the vehicles.”

But Trek is more than merely a competition to allow the best instructors find out who is the best, but an opportunity for each centre to learn new skills, activities and techniques they can disseminate down to their teams and enhance their customer experience. It has also been set up to allow peer-to-peer education, with all the teams conversing and sharing tips and learnings that others may benefit from.

Gilles Espinosa from Team France said it was a great chance to meet new instructors but also to share, learn and develop, not only from the other brand instructor in your team but from across the world.

Killian Dell from Team South Africa added: “We have made some good connections and good friends, and going forward it is only going to grow our passion for the brand and we can take a lot of skills and experiences back to South Africa.”

The other benefit of a joint Jaguar and Land Rover Trek was the opportunity for instructors from the opposite brands to learn about the products and experience the similarities and differences between the vehicle ranges.

Greg Nikolas from Team USA explained that it allowed him to understand how his team-mate Jaguar expert Paul Edwards interpreted and drove cars and how he works. He added:

“What has been interesting is to see how those same vehicle dynamics and thought processes start to apply. It just highlights how many more similarities than differences there are, and we can see each brand being brought together more and more, month-by-month in the US, and this is another perfect fit to that model.”

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