FSU grad heats up the track

By Ron Matus

Special to the Florida State Times

It was Bill Tichener's first pro race.

He was four laps into it doing a cool 50 m.p.h. in the first turn, when another car's open wheels ground into his. His car went flying.

He did a 360 like a gymnast, one observer said. Landed right side up off the ground, half in a chain-link "catch" fence on top of a concrete wall and half on a barricade of old tires.

"I never saw it coming," Tichener said. "All of a sudden you see the horizon turn upside down."

Tichener's wife, seven months pregnant, ran down from the stands as Tichener climbed out of the cockpit. He was OK.

And everyone knew right away where he went to college.

Tichener's driving helmet, modeled after Florida State's football helmet, got as much TV time as the crash. ESPN II played the wreck like a broken record.

Snippets from an on-board camera show the crash from over Tichener's shoulder. Sports announcers couldn't help but mention his helmet.

"It was my 15 minutes of fame," said Tichener, who graduated from FSU with an economics degree in 1988.

Tichener has done better since that race in St. Pete in February. He competes in the Barber Dodge Pro Series, which is like minor leagues for the Indianapolis 500.

"These guys are Mario Andretti before they become Mario Andretti," said Ned Wicker, editor of Indy Car Racing magazine.

The Barber Dodge Pro Series is one of two primary "feeder" series for the big-time races. Drivers, if they can place high consistently here, will move on eventually to Indy Lights and then the Indy 500. Then they'll compete with the best in the world in what has become America's No. 1 spectator sport.

"What the Barber Dodge is going to do is teach you how to race," Wicker said. "It provides one extremely valuable process, and that very simply is weeding out the people who don't belong."

Tichener is unlikely to be weeded out.

He cracked the top 20 in the series, then the Top 15, then finished 9th in Minneapolis last month. He hopes to be shooting for the championship next year and moving to Indy Lights by 1999.

He hasn't been racing cars that long.

He began racing school in California in 1995 and blew past the competition in the school's amateur series. Then he got enough sponsors to quit his radio-advertising job and go pro as an auto racer.

"It's been encouraging, but it's also been harder than I thought," Tichener said by phone from his home in Dallas. "It's one of those things that a lot of people watch on TV and think 'I can do this.' But it's not like that."

Tichener is racing against drivers with five times as much experience, said Rick Roso, spokesperson for Skip Barber Racing, which operates the Barber Dodge series. For a rookie like him to run mid-pack is "pretty darn good."

He went into radio advertising after graduation. He and his wife, Michelle, also an FSU grad (B.S., business, '88), moved to Dallas. And somewhere along the way, he decided to give car racing a shot.

The rest isn't history yet. But Tichener is able to make a living at racing, between a couple of sponsors and prize money. Maintaining his car at this level costs $160,000 a year, Tichener said. (The Mario and Michael Andrettis and Al Unser Jrs. at the top spend $7 million to $8 million a year on their cars.)

Tichener tests his car in Sebring between races. The Dodge engine can push 165 m.p.h. on straightaways.

Minor adjustments in shock setting or tire pressure can mean a half-second "And half a second could mean the difference between finishing fifth and finishing fifteenth," Tichener said.

Tichener always thought about wearing a garnet-and-gold helmet, even when he was doing motocross. But it wasn't until racing school, where everyone wore white helmets, that he decided to use one that would stand out.

"I got so much attention from it, I decided to keep it," Tichener said. "It's been a good conversation piece."

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