Married To Racing

The couple are winning at the game and opening avenues to nurture the sport in Singapore.

- Ian De Cotta

Oliver starts bawling as his dad, cuddling the infant, gets into knots trying to calm the toddler down. Sitting, standing and walking around – nothing works. Perhaps he needs his mummy. Yuey Tan dismisses the thought and thinks there has to be something he isn’t doing right.

Claire Jedrek shows up after her photo shoot, gently relieves her husband from carrying Oliver, and their son immediately stops crying. “He’s usually very relaxed and not like this when out with us,” insists Tan, a little flustered.

In many ways, Jedrek, 36, is a calming influence on Tan’s life, which has been a push to the limits in the fast lane, literally. They are a dream act. Both are racing drivers and can boast to have slayed dragons in their own right.

Since she started racing in 2014 as the only woman in the Malaysian Super Series, Jedrek has outdriven established drivers and occasionally got on the podium. An 11-year veteran in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia series, Tan won a championship category in 2015. The 37-year-old also spent a season in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup in Europe last year. Driving a Porsche 911 GT3, he even raced a Boeing 747 on the runway of Changi Airport in 2009, just for the heck of it – and the publicity, of course.

The couple are a rare breed many times over. Few racing drivers end up getting married, find time to start a family and, on top of it all, own a successful business that is centred on their passion for motor sports. Theirs is an unlikely story, especially in a country that does not have a racing track to help racing drivers bloom. And the journey has so far yielded promising returns.