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.”
View our exclusive Trek 2018 photo gallery here.
Gallery
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