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Written by:
David Phillips
Senior writer, RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com/speedtv
Senior writer, RACER Magazine http://www.racer.com/speedtv
04/29/2008 - 04:50 PM
Oxnard, Calif.
Dominguez and Tadevic (middle) gave former owner Tom Figge (right) a memorable sendoff at Long Beach. (LAT photo) » More Photos
It in no way diminishes the achievements of Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing or KV Racing Technologies to note that the two “transition” teams to win races in the 2008 IndyCar Series did so from a relatively secure funding base. The most successful team in the Champ Car World Series, NHLR has the resources of three owners – each successful in his own right – to draw on, along with sponsorship from McDonalds. Likewise, the K in KVRT stands for Kalkhoven, as in one of the men who kept Champ Car afloat on his own nickel from 2003-2007 and who, along with co-owner Jimmy Vasser, enjoys sponsorship from Plantronics and Australian vintner/financier/developer Craig Gore.
The situation is rather different at Pacific Coast Motorsports, where the IndyCar Series’ newest team owner – former team president Tyler Tadevic – has gone into hock up to (and past) his ears to field a pair of Dallara-Hondas for the coming season. And even that wouldn’t have been nearly enough but for the 11th hour arrival of the “Visit Mexico” sponsorship program, courtesy of driver Mario Dominguez and the Tourism Bureau of Mexico City.
Then again, the fact that a team is competing in the 2008 IndyCar Series thanks largely to sponsorship may be the most encouraging sign yet of the altered financial dynamics wrought by the reunification of Indy car racing.
“You look at the other teams and most of those other teams had some sort of investor to facilitate the move from Champ Car,” Tadevic observes. “But ours is one of the only ones that’s set up 100% on sponsorship,
Truthfully, PCM is already something of a poster child for the shifting sands of American racing in the 21st century. Founded in 2003 by banker Tom Figge in support of his son Alex’s racing career, PCM competed in the Atlantic series as a singleton operation its first season, and grew to a two-car – make that a two-car Atlantic championship-winning – team the following season with Jon Fogarty. An Atlantic championship won and the future of the series in doubt, PCM then ran the American Le Mans Series and Grand-Am GT in ’05 before finishing the year in Daytona Prototypes. A full season of Daytona Prototypes followed with another one in the cards for ’07 until a chance meeting between Tom Figge and Kalkhoven led PCM down the Champ Car path with a two-car effort for Alex Figge and Ryan Dalziel, later replaced by Mario Dominguez, last year. What’s more, PCM entered into a partnership with Shane Seneviratne to bring the US RaceTronics Atlantic team under its wings.
What started as an Atlantic program for Tom Figge's son Alex soon expanded by leaps and bounds. (LAT photo) » More Photos
A new year a new series. Didn’t that get rather, er, expensive? Not necessarily, says Tadevic.
“Every off-season we liquidated what assets we had procured for the series for the season before and throw those funds back towards a new series. We’d go backwards a bit every time, but not as much as you might think when we were able to take our capital investments and basically roll them into the next investment throughout that entire time.”
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