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Home / New Zealand

Recipe for success mixes skill, speed and snow

By Liz Dobson
Other·
4 Sep, 2011 06:30 PM6 mins to read

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Zapping around an icy track is all in a day's work for Tim Martin. Photo / Supplied

Zapping around an icy track is all in a day's work for Tim Martin. Photo / Supplied

His mum, Robyn Martin, is one of New Zealand's most successful cookbook authors, but Aucklander Tim Martin has found his own recipe for success.

The 28-year-old has the enviable job of spending his days speeding around racetracks or even the snow in very fast cars as event manager and chief instructor for New Zealand driver training company Downforce.

The company provides an array of courses, from teaching car owners how to get the most out of their vehicles to helping people channel their inner Jensen Button with a four-level sport driver training programme.

But Martin is just back from spending three weeks in Queenstown where his company ran the popular Audi Ice Experience at the world-renowned Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds on Cardrona, better known as the Snow Farm.

Even before the sun rises, Martin has Audi owners (and motoring writers) driving through a series of courses and tracks in the snow.

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He's helped by a group of instructors - and prominent New Zealand motorsport drivers - Stu Owers, Earl Bamber and Andy Neale.

It takes Martin and his group six months to create the Ice Experience - from picking the cars (this year the choices were red or black Audi A4s or S4s Quattros and Avants), to deciding the driving activities and then heading to Queenstown in June or July so the instructors can train.

Plus there is the accommodation to arrange, meals to host and hours spent standing in the snow with walkie-talkies instructing drivers how to cope with the testing driving conditions.

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This year, Stephan Eichorner, the head instructor of the Audi Driving School in Germany, joins the team for a few days. Eichorner has been an instructor for Audi for 15 years and spends nearly 300 days a year teaching people to drive.

At Queenstown, Eichorner proves his skills by running the hot laps - or, depending on the weather, cold laps. He drives participants in an Audi RS5 4.2-litre Quattro around a track carved out of the snow at such speeds as 147km/h - and all under a minute.

Eichorner is also a mentor to Martin, and has been influential in the young Kiwi's driving career, teaching him to drive on snow at the Audi winter track - a frozen lake in Finland.

But long before he learned to drive on snow and ice, Martin began racing go-karts at the age of 12, before moving up to the GT3 races when he was 21, where he went on to win the 996 class of the Porsche GT3 Cup in 2008.

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He's also raced at the 24-hour Nurburgring race in Germany and hopes to head back there next year - if he can find the sponsorship.

And it's that constant push for sponsorship as a motorsports driver that cemented his move to becoming a driving instructor.

Early in his racing career, Martin knew that only a few drivers in Australasia could make a full-time living out of motorsports.

But he has been fortunate enough to turn his enthusiasm for driving into a career.

"I've had a passion for driving from an early age," he said. "I used to love watching racing on the television ... it's every kid's dream to be a racing car driver, but I realised I couldn't earn a living from racing."

So in 2005 Downforce was formed and Martin joined first as a freelance instructor and then, when the company realised there were no high-end driving courses that included hospitality in New Zealand, he began organising events.

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The company has strong links with the Giltrap Group - distributors of Audi in New Zealand - and has run the Ice Experience for three years.

But it's not all about showing Audi owners how to deal with oversteer and understeer at minus-something degrees in the snow at Cardrona.

"It's a dream job," says Martin, as he looks across one of the tracks to the snow-covered mountain ranges beyond. Beats sitting in an office any day. But it's not all picturesque surroundings and demonstrating manoeuvres to drivers.

In Queenstown, Martin and his team are working 18-hour days when the Ice Experience driving days are held. They're up at 4am to drive up to Cardrona to prepare the cars before the participants arrive. And at night the instructors are still working - entertaining the course participants over drinks and dinner.

But that's what the company does. Last year, Martin organised 70 days of driver training and it's on racetrack days - when owners take their vehicles for driver training - that his job can be very rewarding.

"We get a few women coming along to the events and it's great to see how they progress," he said.

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"They start off as timid and at the end of it they are really enjoying themselves. They listen to what the instructors have to say and then put it into practice."

But there's probably one woman who isn't timid when it comes to motoring - Martin's mum, Robyn. She's also a lover of cars - and at one stage owned an infamous Porsche.

When Robyn was the NZ Woman's Weekly's test kitchen editor, she owned a yellow Boxster that seemed to attract the attention of most of the police force in Auckland.

Presuming she was a "girl racer", cops would pull Robyn over and tell her to slow down - even though she hadn't gone over the limit.

These days Robyn is driving around the streets of Blenheim, as she and her husband, John Hedges, own the exclusive B&B Mansion Grange.

"Mum really supports my career," says Martin. "She loves it. But she was always nervous when I was racing."

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Not that Robyn needs to worry about Martin racing on the track now. But he himself has something to worry about.

The helicopter to take us motoring writers back to Queenstown is running late - something that frustrates the super-organised Martin.

But soon we're on the chopper and Martin is doing his own version of a farewell wave - racing one of the Audis along a track as we hover above.

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