What place does motorsport and racetracks have in fleet management or youth driver training? Is a fair and rational question. I mean you’d hope that your staff are not racing into treble digits at any given moment or viewing kerbs and corners as ripple strips.

However, as Josie Spillane, Chief Executive Officer at Highlands, Hampton Downs, Taupo Motorsport Park and Game Over explains, teaching your employees life-saving driving skills is more about duty of care, and with team challenges and go-karting added for fun, can even be incentivised.

Josie says, “Both on and off the racetrack, car manufacturers have invested in all of this technology and developed amazing cars that are so much safer than what they used to be, but drivers are overall are dumber. We’ve gotten worse and worse.”

Josie Spillane is a Kiwi through and through, originally hailing from Temuka she’s an ‘all in or all out’ leader that below her friendly, yet seemingly stoic first impression, has an enviable business mind, boundless empathy and a ‘how can I’ attitude.

Despite her career background including photocopier sales and real estate, Josie spent much of her formative years in hospitality and then fundraising with Cure Kids (undoubtedly where her empathy comes from) and for the past decade, has been in and around motorsport, working with the irrepressible Tony Quinn (TQ) need I say any more.

Actually, if you do need to know more, Josie sums herself up perfectly by saying – “I’m a mum, I’m a wife and I’m a friend. But I’m also an incredibly passionate person, if I’m doing something I am all in or I’m all out, I can’t do anything half arsed. My guilty pleasure is Shortland Street and I’m mocked relentlessly for it. I am fiercely loyal, and I have a very real sense of right and wrong.”

Josie’s involvement in motorsport began in 2013 at the opening of Highland Motorsport Park in Cromwell. She says that she had no idea what was happening but told her husband, “I can’t believe this is my backyard and I’m not part of it.” A few phone calls and a couple of meetings later and that was that.

“Tony [Quinn] brought me on to develop the GT membership and sell signage. I was mesmerised by Highlands from the very beginning, there’s something inherently special about it. And I enjoyed the challenge of TQ immensely from the start, he’s very charismatic but fiercely driven.”

Josie says that from there on in, “Things got real, real fast.” It’s fair to say that nothing’s been done like Highlands ever before, certainly not in Australasia, and with TQ’s vision and investment, Josie was not only able to commercialise it, but with the team, give it its heart.
Josie may have come into the sport knowing very little about it, but she’s evidently a quick learner.

“I’ve learnt the business of motorsport,” she says “I’m very good at the business of motorsport. I do observe and I do listen even though I talk a lot. I’m very proud that I get to hold a wonderful position of guardianship for the sport of New Zealand. I can remember TQ telling me, ‘we’re going to change the landscape of motorsport in New Zealand’ and I thought that sounded great, so I used that in all my spiels.”

But it’s not just the ‘landscape of motorsport’ that Josie has helped change, both Josie and the team have a keen eye on safety too.

“I’m very proud of that. I have led the safety message with the support of the experts in the business, experts like Greg Murphy.”

In short, they were the first tracks to make HANs devices mandatory and have changed the drifting rules considerably. They also have PPE rules for every different type of activity that you do on a circuit, that changes at different speeds or if you’ve got a professional instructor beside you.  

“They’re all things that we’ve evolved over time to ensure that we’re mitigating as much risk as possible, but there’s still an element of risk, it’s motorsport, not lawn bowls.”

Then there’s Street Smart, bringing the skills and safety mentality of the race track to the road.

“At the end of the day, no one should die during a hobby. And motorsport for most is a hobby. But road deaths are out of control, and that’s why we made an announcement about our support of Street Smart, with Tony donating an incredible $750,000 to change the needle on road deaths in NZ. With hands-on, practical driver training for the youth, what we’re doing is making a difference in people’s lives.”

She adds that the fact is that we put kids in cars, they don’t know ABS, they don’t know understeer or oversteer, they’re not shown how to stop in an emergency situation, or told/shown how to read road conditions, or even how to ensure they have the correct seating position in a car.

“We’re putting them in weapons, and then we’re putting them on an open road with a white line. It’s such common sense to give them the tools, so that they can keep themselves as safe as possible. And we’re simply not doing it.”

In typical Josie ‘all in’ style, the Tony Quinn Foundation has grown their commitment to Street Smart cause to the tune of almost a million dollars (including tracks and staff allocation) and Subaru has recently joined the momentum as a partner.
And it doesn’t stop there, they’ve met with Minister David Seymour, and are lobbying the government for the laws to be changed to make hands on practical driver training compulsory – and funded.

“There are seven circuits in New Zealand, so the infrastructure is there as a great starting point. ACC supports incentives for motorbike training because it reduces the risk of injury, why aren’t they doing that for drivers of cars? $100’s of millions of dollars are being wasted on consultants, road signs and rubbish marketing campaigns. Let’s invest it into driver training. The net economic result to New Zealand will be better and it is going to save lives. It’s honestly feels to me like it is no brainer.” And I’m wild that road safety has become a massive bureaucratic consultant hole where money goes to die and hundreds of Kiwis meantime continue to be killed on new Zealand roads.

Last but by no means least, there’s also a big reason for fleet managers and corporations to take notice of what’s going on at the racetrack, and that’s health and safety.

From an obligation as an employer, if you’re providing an employee with a work vehicle, you have a duty of care under the health and safety rules in New Zealand to ensure that they have received proper training to be in control of their vehicles. So it’s really meeting your obligations as an employer, but it’s also ensuring that we’re getting the roads as safe as we can.

Josie says, “There are some wonderful opportunities for businesses large and small, both from a health and safety perspective that you can tie into a bit of a team building day, or from an incentive/reward for customers or clients or staff.”
She explains that from the driver training perspective, all three circuits, Hamptons, Taupo and Highlands offer driving experiences to give corporates, individuals or companies hands-on practical driver training.

“They’re three-hour programmes, 85 percent of it in your own car, and you’re learning the tools to keep yourself safe on the road.”

And then from the corporate incentive side, all three circuits have go-karts and they all have an experience for you to drive your own cars or use one of their vehicles on a U drive programme.

“Highlands is kind of like Disneyland on steroids. We’ve got 12 different activities on site, you’ve got the hot laps in the Ferrari/Porsche. We’ve got the Subaru WRX experience, the cafe, the museum, and a famous loo with a view. We can cater from two people to 200. You’re limited by your own imagination. Because if you can think of it, we’ll figure out a way to do it.”

Josie leaves us with her favourite saying and it’s a reflection of what they continue to do, ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done’.