On September 10, CablePrice’s Wellington branch entered four technicians in this year’s Isuzu Trucks I-1 GP national technical skills competition, taking out four of the five top spots, including Luke Heesterman taking first place.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, this year’s competition was held in a new format. All competition tasks had to be completed remotely at dealerships, with the contestants being supervised by their service managers. This year saw 11 contestants from two dealerships – CablePrice Wellington had four participants while CAL Isuzu Hamilton had seven.
The competition consisted of two parts – a theory exam and practical scenarios. During the theory exam each contestant had to answer 25 general mechanical knowledge questions in no longer than 75 minutes. Exam questions were borrowed from past year’s worldwide I-1 GP tournaments. This gave the contestants a taste of the language used by Japan and the level of knowledge expected to be seen by Isuzu Motors Limited.
Luke Heesterman
For the practical part, contestants had to troubleshoot two real breakdown situations seen in New Zealand earlier this year. For the first scenario, it was necessary to troubleshoot a DPD (diesel particulate diffuser) fault, and for the second they had to identify a faulty component in an electrical system. Contestants had to not only identify the malfunctioning component, but also explain the mechanism of the failure and describe how the faulty part affects the operation of other systems in the truck. Luke scored top points from the practical section, while Paul Everson from CAL Isuzu Hamilton was the best in the theory exam.
“CablePrice Wellington has a strong record with three technicians attending the world finals over the past five years, including Luke attending the 2017 world finals. Now he’s back again to give the 2020 Isuzu I-1 GP e-competition a shot,” says Matthew Dittmer, CablePrice Wellington branch manager
Luke and Paul will make a strong team, which will represent New Zealand in the international final of the I-1 GP e-competition against 86 participants from 43 countries.
The New Zealand team will travel to the Isuzu NZ Auckland Training Centre in November and will be completing tasks online while they are live streamed to Japan.
