Olschowka gunning for five straight

Jeff Olschowka is on a roll at Marysville Raceway Park, gunning to keep a streak alive tonight.

The Yuba City driver has won four straight street stock feature races on the local quarter-mile clay oval, but he still trails former two-time champion Bill Knoop of Hallwood by 20 points in the series championship points race (391-371).

"We've gotten it together lately," Olschowka said, "after we had some transmission problems earlier."

Still, it's been the Olschowka-Knoop show or the Knoop-Olschowka show in the first six races of the season.

Knoop won the first two races with Olschowka second. Olschowka has then won the last four, with Knoop placing second three times and third once.

Because Olschowka can't distance himself too far from Knoop each week, he's having a hard time closing the gap in the points race.

"It's still a pretty long way to go," Olschowka said, with 15 more main events remaining, so there's still plenty of time to catch Knoop.

Olschowka added it is a mix of luck as well as skill that has kept Olschowka running in front of the street stock pack the past four weeks.

Olschowka has been racing in Marysville for seven seasons, competing in the mini-stocks for the first four and street stocks the last three.

His best season finish was a third-place in mini-stocks.

"It should have been first," Olschowka said, noting he finished tied for the points lead with two other drivers, but the tie was broken based on main event and heat event wins.

Besides running in Marysville, Olschowka has run regularly at Silver Dollar Speedway in Chico, having won two stock car champ onships.

He is spending more time running Marysville this season because its races are contested on Saturday nights, while Chico runs its events on Fridays.

"It's pretty hard to get off work and get up to Chico in time on Friday nights," Olschowka said.

There's another reason why Olschowka likes to run Marysville.

"There's a lot more competition at Marysville," Olschowka said. "In Chico there may be only two or three good drivers but at Marysville any of the top five or six drivers can win any given week."

Also, the driving is cleaner. Olschowka said Silver Dollar track officials basically let drivers do whatever they want to. He noted a couple of weeks ago he had one driver take him and his car out of the race, with no penalty for rough driving.

"It's just a lot more fun racing at Marysville," Olschowka added.

Besides the street stocks, other divisions racing tonight at Marysville Raceway Park include the wingless sprints, the modifieds, the NorCal dwarf cars and the 600 lites. Spectator gates open at 5 p.m., with racing set to begin at 7 o'clock.

For a list of the top 10 drivers at Marysville Raceway Park, turn to B2.

Contact sports reporter Richard Myers at 749-4714 or rmyers@appeal-democrat.com.