OLSON’S ARROGANCE COSTS HIM
VICTORY IN FOURTH ROUND OF JHR FALL 2002 CHAMPIONSHIP
____________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release
December 8, 2002
Ventura, CA – During today’s Round Four of the JHR Fall 2002 Championship in sunny Ventura Beach, California, spectators witnessed action-packed racing from the stands. All three of the day’s “sprint” kart races were full of exciting position swaps by racers who had all qualified within hundredths of seconds of each other.
Veteran shifter kart champion Charles McClave joined the sprints for the day’s races on the challenging “B-track” configuration, and by late morning had managed to take pole position. Racer Pete Olson has dominated several of the recent B-track races, but today drove one of his worst days since his starry-eyed debut in Ventura almost two years ago. Just recently, Olson completed the two-day advanced shifter kart course at JHR, and astonished instructors by completing laps within just a few tenths of their times by only the end of his second session ever driven in the complex 90 mph, six-speed manual karts. But while Olson seemed ready to move up to the faster shifter karts for next spring’s race series, by now he is in danger of being ousted in the Fall 2002 Sprint Kart Championship. Today, Olson once again found out how the other half lives.
Starting the first “heat” race mid-pack as a result of his disappointing qualifying times, Olson managed to complete several difficult passes to finish 3rd. But during the second “heat” race, he made one of the most foolish mistakes of his career to date, one that cost him an important win for the points as well as a good starting position in the final, “main” race.
Olson started the race in second, and stayed close to the race leader for the entire event. During the final, white flag lap, he made an aggressive pass on the inside of one of the final turns, and took the lead for the finish. But during the last turn of the race, he took a slower, inside blocking line to hold off the former race leader. Olson thought that he simply had to keep the second place driver behind on the final short run on the straight to the checkered flag. Olson threw up a characteristic “number one” signal with his hand right before crossing the finish line, and had almost crossed when the second place driver passed him on the outside, faster line, to take victory just a few feet ahead. To say that Olson is disappointed would be a serious understatement.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” he said from his home in Hollywood. “I was almost driving those last few turns like I didn’t care, thinking that after I made that pass on the leader that all I had to do was go through the motions to win. I was already celebrating victory before I had even finished that last lap. Instead of driving the normal “fast line”, which would have guaranteed me victory, I didn’t even put in the effort and instead I drove a tight inside rookie “blocking line” which I figured would just hold him off until we drove that last twenty feet until the finish. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I was showing the ‘number one’ to the crowd and saw him inch by on the outside.”
Olson’s arrogance cost him dearly. As a result of the 2nd place finish in the second heat race, Olson started the “main” race in third place rather than 2nd, which would have given him a great advantage at the start. Starting in 3rd place put Olson behind the pole position leader, Charles McClave, on the starting grid at the beginning of the race. McClave got off to an uncharacteristically slow start, which held up Olson enough to enable several karts to pass on Olson’s outside.
But little did Olson know that the most crucial race of the day would end in his worst finish in over a year.
In an uncharacteristic display of poor driving, he was passed by several drivers to fall back to 6th place by the checkered flag.
Luckily for Olson, his competitors had done poorly enough in the first two “heat” races to give Olson a relatively competitive day in the points standings overall. Olson still leads the Championship, but is only a half a point ahead of the second place driver, and just three points ahead of the third place racer in the series.
Can Olson hold on to the lead for the season’s winner’s trophy? At this point, it is clear that the top racers are so close in the points that only the very final race day, Round Five of the JHR Fall 2002 Championship on January 5th, 2003, will determine the finishing standings for the series.
For more information on Pete
Olson, visit his website at: www.peteolson.com. And to follow the Jim Hall Kart Racing
Series, log on to: www.jhrkartracing.com.
- - - -
Charles Schepens
Schepens Promotions
29000 West Nine Mile Road
Farmington Hills, MI 48336
________________________________________________________________________