Meet Our World Class Instructors

Nico Rondet

Chief Instructor

Nico Rondet has been a professional race car driver for over 25 years. His professional racing career has taken him from Go-Karts in Brasil to both Touring Car and Open-Wheel racing in France and England.  The late-1990’s had him competing in the Barber Dodge Pro Series (The Open-Wheel development series for former CART).  Rondet won every stage of the development ladder: the Dodge 2.0 liter Championship in 1996, Rookie of the Year in 1997 and the Series Championship in 2001. His efforts led him to a partial year at the Toyota Atlantics Series in 2002. In 2011, Nico raced a partial season of the Grand Am Continental Tire Challenge.

Beyond Nico’s talents behind the wheel, his 20 plus year experience in developing the racing craft have also allowed him to build a keen understanding of driving dynamics and telemetry interpretation. Since the early years of his career, Nico has taught performance driving to fellow professionals, up and coming drivers, and driving enthusiasts.

In 2007 Nico joined the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School as the Chief Instructor at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California.  The school has now transitioned to Simraceway’s Performance Driving Center where Nico also dedicates time to development and testing of physics for the Simraceway Online Racing platform.

In 2015 Nico is racing the Compass 360 Audi S3 in the IMSA Continental Challenge Series with racing school graduate Jim McGuire

Tom Dyer

Senior Instructor

Tony Brakohiapa

Senior Instructor  

Tony Brakohiapa, has been a professional race driver for 15 years. For 2015, Tony is gearing up for the world renowned Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. He will be running in the Time Attack 1 class with his 2009 Ford Mustang GT with a 1000hp twin-turbo V8.

Tony’s experience includes Open-Wheel, Stock Cars, Sports and Touring cars, Karting etc. He has also been a top driver in the Formula Drift National Championship for almost 10yrs. He visited the Middle East with Formula Drift for the first ever pro-drift event at the world famous Yas Marina Formula One track in Abu Dhabi. He was also in Qatar at the Al-Anabi racetrack and Kuala Lampur at the Sepang Formula One Circuit.

Tony is a lead instructor for Simraceway Performance Driving Center and Audi sportscar experience at Sonoma Raceway. Tony also works as a private driving coach for various vintage (C.S.R.G.-Classic Sportscar Racing Group), Ferrari Challenge, sportscar teams such as T.R.G. (The Racers Group). Tony is an accomplished film and television stunt driver for many top car manufacturers. He was the stunt driving double for the rap artist Bow Wow in the movie “The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift.” Tony has been a stunt driving double for celebrities like Lebron James, Kevin Hart, Dr. Dre, etc. Tony’s recent film work includes the Tom Cruise movie “Jack Reacher”, the sequel “Dawn of The Planet of The Apes” and recently wrapped on working the new exciting film “Need For Speed” by Dreamworks Pictures. Tony plays and drives as the character “The Gooch” while covering other stunt driving duties for the film. Tony was born in Kumasi, Ghana, West Africa and currently lives near San Francisco, CA.

Tyler Mcquarrie

Instructor

Jeff Sakowicz

Chief Instructor

Jeff is a go-kart and formula car racer originally from Southern California.  Jeff’s first effort at racing was on a bicycle competing in Bicycle Moto Cross all over California from the age of five to the age of eight.  At age nine Jeff began racing go-karts.  Competing throughout Southern California and Arizona, Jeff raced against the best competition the Nation had to offer.  After many race wins and season championships Jeff decided to begin racing Formula Fords.  Jeff competed in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) for two years in the Formula Ford class.  At that point, Jeff began racing a Formula Continental and began traveling around the Country racing in with the United States Formula Ford 2000 (USF2000) championship series.

With many race wins and multiple podium finishes in the American Continental Championship (ACC) Jeff placed a priority on teaching the craft.  Jeff’s teaching career began as a summer job at the local go-kart school at age 13.  Jeff continued to work at the go-kart school off and on through high school before committing to the school full time once out of high school and when he was home between stints on the road traveling from race to race.  Once the bulk of Jeff’s racing career was over, he moved to Sonoma, CA in 2007 to work at what are now the Simraceway Performance Driving Center and the Audi Sportscar Experience.  Since 2007, Jeff has continued to hone his craft as a racing instructor, and now is a lead instructor with both the Simraceway Performance Driving Center and Audi Sportscar Experience.