RFM Front Page News

PCM Team Director Tyler Tadevic: “Dude, we race cars for a living!”
By Jamie Longmuir
Photos courtesy Jamie Longmuir 2007
MONT-TREMBLANT, Canada (July 6, 2007) — Watching PCM Team Director Tyler Tadevic discuss the aerodynamics of the Champ Car DP01 chassis with a group of fans from the Champ Car Inner Circle fan club, you can’t help but be caught up in the passion and enthusiasm of a man who is clearly doing what he loves and is getting paid for it.

Like most fans, Tyler’s interest in motorsports was sparked at an early age, though also like most people, his family and career took him in different directions. Tyler explains, “As a young kid, I did some go-karting. I didn't get to compete as much as I would have liked. For my family it wasn’t something they were all into, but I loved it. About 12-13 years ago, I was working a sales job in Seattle, and always wanted to be in motorsports.” Unlike most people though, Tyler decided to do something to make his dreams become a reality. “I had just finally had enough, and I said I'm just going to go do this - I'll regret it if I don't. So, I moved to Southern California and tried to get onboard with Skip Barber or Jim Russell, and ultimately ended up getting hired by [World Speed Motorsports (WSM)].”

As a new guy in the racing world, Tyler had to start off at the bottom and work his way up with different teams. “I started off as the guy who mopped the floors, cleaned the wheels and scraped the stickers off the side of trailers - the grunt, then moved to a truck driver's position for a number of years…to a #2 mechanics position, then an engineers assistant, then a manager…over the course of that I was with three different teams - WSM, Hylton Motorsports and then S3 Racing.”

Like many people moving in the racing world, Tyler’s next career move would come through a contact made at WSM. “In October 2002, Alex Figge had run as a customer of WSM in their Atlantic program, and at the end of that year, he and his dad decided they were going to do something else - and they asked me if I wanted to join them…so we formed Pacific Coast in October of 2002, and campaigned as a single car team in 2003 with Alex.”

The small Atlantic team would continue to grow in 2004, adding Jon Fogarty as a teammate to Alex Figge. Together they would go on to win 7 of 12 races and the Championship, beating a young Scot by the name of Ryan Daiziel. In 2005, with the decision to run in the ALMS series with the Corvette, the team would need a teammate for Alex Figge. As Tyler explains, “When we decided to move to sportscar, we knew we needed to take on another driver. Jon Fogarty was the logical choice for us – but he had already signed an agreement with the Porsche Flying Lizard team at that time, and wasn't available. So, we said, who's the next best person? We came from open wheel racing, Ryan was available, it didn't look like he was going to get his Champ Car ride, wasn't going to get to run in Atlantic again. So, we said [to Ryan Daiziel], you want to come drive with us?”

On the subject of Ryan Daiziel, Tyler goes further to say, “We think he's the real deal - an exceptionally talented driver, and between him and Alex and their driving styles - they really complement one another in their approach to going fast - they make each other faster. He really fits well with the dynamic of the team… He and Alex, their dynamic together, unlike every other driver pairing, they're best friends and spend as much time together away from the track as they do at the track.”

As someone with a true passion for the sport and his work, Tyler wants to make sure he has a group of guys who share his passion and can work together. “As the team director, what's really important to me is the team work aspect - I want guys who want to be here, who get along. We're not curing cancer, we wouldn't take it any more seriously if we were, but at the same time, don't forget, not only are we entertainment form, but dude, we race cars for a living! That at least deserves a half a smile in the morning once or twice! You could be delivering Pepsi to the local 7-11 every day, not that that's a bad job, but you can't tell me that that guy's as passionate about what he's doing as I am about what I'm doing.”

Though not intentional, Tyler believes the move from Atlantic to sports cars before Champ Car was ideal for the team to learn the skills necessary to compete at the top level of open-wheel racing. “It was a really methodical transition from the purest form of racing, which I think Atlantic is - a sprint race where the driver and the car determine your position in the race and the crew can do very little once the green flag falls...to sports car, where the crew plays a massive role…then you get to Champ Car, where it's still very much up to the driver and engineer and the car and the engineer to go out and have a competitive package, but the crew plays a pretty significant role as well. I'd love to tell you that we meant to go do it like that. It ended up being a very methodical transition for the team, so that we integrated the different aspects of what we try to in Champ Car, one step at a time.”

Besides the differences in the contributions required from the crew, Tyler also spoke of the different level of competition Champ Car brings. “The level of competitiveness and the differences from one team to the next are much smaller [in Champ Car]. The margin for error and precision that comes along with open-wheel racing is not duplicated in sports cars - it's quite a lot more relaxed…you don't see any old fat dudes who smoke running in Champ Car, you do in sports cars.”

Though he has the team he wants behind him, Tyler’s very upfront about the team’s struggles in their first season of Champ Car. “It's been tough. We're no rookies to starting up an organisation for the first year. This is our fourth new series in five years. The difference was, in sports cars and Atlantic, we were competitive right out of the gate and we maintained that competitiveness and improved on it. In Champ Car, we have had a lack of competitiveness right from the get-go, so it's been really frustrating and is a testament to the other organisations here and the level at which you have to operate at to be successful. I don't think we've underestimated it, but it would have been impossible for us to overestimate the difficulty, it's been extremely difficult.”

While the DP01 did help level the playing field in Champ Car, it has not made the first season for PCM any easier. “Technically on the car, the approach that we took with all of our other cars to get the car going fast, doesn't seem to be working with this particular car, so we're struggling performance-wise on the overall setup of the car, and what we have to do to get the car going fast.”

An interesting point by Tyler is that finishing position in Champ Car is not necessarily indicative of the team’s overall performance. “We've been fortunate enough to finish inside the top-10 because we've made some good decisions during races, Ryan's stayed out of trouble and attrition has helped us out, but at the end of the day, he still does well to qualify 13th, 14th. So to us, the race isn't necessarily an indicator of where you are performance-wise, qualifying is a much more clear indicator.” Thus, Tyler’s goal for PCM isn’t just to be finishing in the top-10, but also to be qualifying in the top 10.

While PCM will no doubt face many more challenges as they chase down the Champ Car establishment, it’s a delight to watch a group of people that all love what they do, and are working towards a common goal. As their passionate leader put it so well, “Dude, we race cars for a living!”