Being a student is the perfect pursuit for Richard Moore who has a need for speed and adrenalin as a leading V8 SuperTourer driver.

Richard is part of the Series of Champions line-up of race drivers in the newly formed New Zealand V8 SuperTourer series.

Richard and top V8 Supercars drivers Greg Murphy and Paul Manuell make up the M3 Racing team based in a state-of-the-art race shop in Auckland’s East Tamaki.

‘Having tasted Supercars in the Porsche GT3 series and competing at the top level in KZ2 gearbox Kart class, I can’t wait each time to get out there on the track,’ Richard says. ‘And this series is so exciting.’

Richard has always had the desire to become a professional motorsport driver, but enrolling in a BCom in Marketing and Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of Canterbury has also captured his need for stimuli around him.

‘Marketing is all around us. At uni we study how stimuli around us affect our behaviour and purchasing patterns. As a child I was extremely intrigued by advertisements. Thinking back now I really had no idea how huge the world of marketing really is and how it is impossible not to be affected by it.’

Although enjoying his courses and loving the lifestyle at UC, Richard says that it is a juggle to study and race cars.

‘I’m lucky enough to have huge support from many people around me and without that support there is no way I would even come close to coping! This year will be more intense than any other year with an extra workload of uni papers and competing in the country’s premier motorsport class against the best drivers in Australasia. But if it was easy then it wouldn’t be any fun.'

And Richard says just because he sits in a comfy seat, doesn’t mean he lounges around. He often spends between 20 and 30 hours a week working on fitness; running, biking, in the gym and in a simulator, ‘however I always find it important hang out with friends and enjoy the uni lifestyle’.

Richard started racing Karts when he was eight years old, graduating to a seventh placing at the World Finals in Portugal when he was only 15.

He flew directly back to Auckland the day following the World Finals so he could compete that weekend in the Mini Challenge series. Although he was too young to drive a car to the track, he could drive around the track at speeds above 200kph – and he was good enough to qualify in pole position.

‘I love motorsport – the technology involved, the fitness needed, the skill, the marketing, then the money,’ he says.

‘It all gets combined to add up to a track experience of close to 300 kilometres an hour, the body undergoing four times the force of gravity and your mind being pushed to the absolute limits of concentration and reaction times. It is these challenges that make me love it.'